Butterflies!

I missed a few weekend posts so I am backing up a bit, sharing stories and pictures. The weekend after we got home from Seattle (August 7th and 8th) we went to Brookside Gardens which is a huge park with beautiful gardens, fountains, ponds, koi, frogs, bunnies and other wildlife. For anyone who lives in our area I absolutely recommend it. We saw a frog and a bunny which was pretty neat. We walked along a large pond and we stopped to see if we could find any fish or frogs and Aidan spotted the smallest gray frog sitting on a gray rock. The frog was about 1/2 inch and looked almost exactly the same color as the rock he was sitting on. I have no idea how he saw it but he must have the eyes of a hawk.

One of the best exhibits at the Brookside Gardens is the "Wings of Fancy" Live Butterfly Exhibit which goes on from May through September (September 20th). At the start of your visit their is catepillar exhbit where you can see different butterflies in different states of their life cycle. Then you enter the main exhbit where there are hundreds of butterlies flying around. They are so beautiful. There are orange, blue, green, red, black, spotted, striped, patterned butterflies flying, resting, and eating fruit. It really is fun to see.

They also have an indoor learning center, gift shop and other special exhibits. Sometimes they have plant sales, gardening classes, etc. It's always nice to go in the center when it is hot and humid outside like the day we ventured to the gardens.

They also have a small kids area, where the kids can learn about gardening vegetables, pollinating insects, and play in a hollowed log, sweep (or pretend they are a witch flying on a broom stick), play in a house and gnome hut.

After we left the Brookside Gardens we went to lunch at potbelly's and walked around. We had breakfast late that day and ended up eating lunch at 3pm which seemed crazy but it was lazy, breezy Saturday.