Birth

A brand new lacewing larva emerges from it's egg.

Challenging conditions – dark grey skies, strong winds and only fleeting sunshine made this hard to photograph. I went back outside just now with my ruler and reading glasses – these eggs are less than 1mm long (smaller than a pin head) and I couldn't see any larvae with my naked eye (even with glasses on). They may have wandered off of course. This little larva has a lot of growing to do.

Slightly bigger

Hoping for some rain this evening – I held off watering this morning, as the forecast gave a 90% chance of rain... I have just checked the BoM and we have had 34mm of rain this year so far. That's not very much... no wonder the plants all look so shrivelled.