Saturday at the exhibit.

At my docent gig today a woman stated repeatedly to no one in particular that we were all standing in 'God's garden'. It was also a place, I noticed, where one of her offspring felt entitled to pull a flower off of a bush in the hopes of enticing a butterfly to come near her. On top of that, said offspring left her detritus all over a bench for the duration, thus blocking it from being used by other visitors. I'd like to that think that God, were s/he to exist, would have frowned on her behavior.

One young visitor was so excited to be at the exhibit that he kept zipping around from one area to the next, pointing and exclaiming things as he went. His father, who mostly very quietly stood by (I suspect he was tuckered out), told me that his son's preschool teacher had recently taught the class about the life cycle of butterflies (and, probably, moths). The boy was all of 3 years of age, but knew enough to tell me very briefly about cocoons and that butterflies obtained their nourishment from flowers. He was such an engaging little kid who kept leading me by the hand to both show me things he'd discovered and ask me about things that made him curious. In my five months of being a docent, he's been the only child to take me by the hand & lead me around. It was sweet.

Noshing Monarch

Non-native bottle brush at the exhibit.

The plants at the exhibit are rotated out frequently in order to keep the butterflies flush with nectar. This week I came in and saw that the gardeners had installed a bottle brush. It hadn't occurred to me that butterflies would dig this plant. I'm not even sure how the butterfly's proboscis could access nectar. To my eye, there's no sort of blossom opening, is there? I guess it's in the green bit from where the 'bristles' extend. Well, anyway, the Monarchs were into it, but I don't have photographic evidence to back up this assertion.