Purple emperor butterfly

Purple emperor butterfly

Apatura iris. I have referred to this as the blue tipped butterfly in the past. Finally pulled my finger out and looked it up.

Yesterday I made a start with the house move. No sooner had I started moving boxes across when my neighbor, Benny, came out with his sleeves rolled up and ready to work. I tried to tell him that he need only help with the heavy stuff later on, but he wasn't having any of that. What a hero, a proper neighbor.

The downstairs workshop is now done. Now I have to figure out what to do with the bed frame. It came in through the upstairs balcony door, but I am not looking forward to that maneuver with just me and Benny. I may scrap the bed frame, sleep on the mattress for a few days while I make a new bed frame that will fit up the stairs. Also an opportunity to raise the bed up a few inches and introduce a lip around the edge, to stop the mattress from wandering, what a pain that is.

It is so hot in the daytime that we have decided not to start again until the evening. I still have lots of boxing and preparation to do. I hate moving!

Early safari today, lots of material to choose from but nothing really stood out. I chose this obscure butterfly image because it highlights the reproduction method of this wonderful bloom of the mimosa tree, at least it looks like a mimosa, but the leaves don't curl when touched as with a true mimosa.

The bloom has tiny petals and extremely long pollen tipped stamen. I often wondered how it would ever get pollinated, as it never seemed to be visited by bees and even if it was, how would they pick up the pollen to transfer to the next plant. I am slow, but I finally figured it out while processing this image. The bloom is engineered for butterfly pollination and you can see the specs of pollen on the butterflies wings. Ha! Isn't nature wonderful.

Dave