Le Cage aux Folles no no! This is Le Cage de les Legumes ....

A garden with a view! We can wheel these garden boxes around the front terrace chasing the sun. We fitted them with some birding-proofing net to protect our baby veggies - onions, beetroot, turnip, swede, both red and white radish, cos lettuce, parsley and violas plus broad beans and lemon grass in the ‘orchard’ (the side terrace). Parsnip, carrots and more lettuce and silverbeet went into the main front garden bed. (We've since irrigated these beds for while we're away)

We cut back one of our corner trees in the hopes of letting more sun in for our winter veggies; surprising how much we pruned.  The tree will eventually be replaced with an flowering native to attract the honeyeaters. We were a bit pooped  - pruning on a balcony garden is not easy when one has to hang out over the street 5 floors below .... eek! We really had quite a working bee - and with a real working bee!
As we worked a bee kept foraging in and out of the nasturtium flowers completely unconcerned by our presence. So of course I raced inside grabbed my phone and took some action shots

This flower looks spent but there must have been something worth foraging for. Perhaps nature saves the best bits to last!

This flower has a rather stunning design with lots of features to attract insects and facilitate pollination and the bee just happens to have a furry body which captures pollen.  So clever! 

Doesn’t happen everyday but the next day we lunched with a butterfly! While we dined on leek and spinach dumplings, this little butterfly sipped on our marigolds not 2m away. I love butterflies but they rarely stop long enough for you to take a closer look. But my new little camera got up close and had a peek. Have you ever seen a butterfly’s mouth or huge compound eyes?

Fascinating to watch! Zoom in and watch as the butterfly pokes its proboscis in and out of tiny pots of nectar. Gorgeous (but mute the sound it adds nothing). The wingspan of our pretty little thing was probably about 4cm - weeny compared to the huge Cairns Birdwing butterfly, the largest of all Australian butterflies with a wingspan up to 18cm.  When David Attenborough saw them on a visit to the area, he said he would select these to go in his ‘Ark’. But our busy little jewel was just as lovely to watch.