Cleveland Botanical Garden

Larry and I had a most delightful outing to the Cleveland Botanical Garden.

The flowers were lovely, of course, but the best part was the glass house full of plants and butterflies.

As you can imagine, it was difficult to photograph an enormous greenhouse full of moving butterflies. They are unusual varieties from Costa Rica, hatched here at the botanical garden.


These birds were about as big as my thumb. We also saw a red one about the same size - I was enchanted.

Paradise for someone who loves green.

A butterfly landed on Larry's shoulder! He had the camera strap around his neck, so we just turned it up and shot the picture. This variety is bright blue from the top, but when you see it folded it is mottled brown. I'm sure it makes great camoflage, but a disappointing photo!

It was a beautiful day for an outing.

The parking meters took us by surprise. Remember the ones that used to take a penny, and it gave a little zzzzip noise and you got to watch the arrow move to the amount of time your penny gave you? These are far less entertaining. You put in your quarter for half an hour, then another quarter, and so on, and it is just boring electronic numbers. Some advances in technology are not improvements!

I remember years ago when Daniel was very young he was transfixed with cause and effect. He liked to play with the digital clock to watch the numbers move, liked to watch the timer on the dryer, and he LOVED to feed parking meters. Sometimes we would walk down a street that had meters and pop nickels (pennies were from my childhood, by then we were up to nickels) in them all so he could watch the cause and effect.

The suburb we live in is just halfway between Cleveland and Akron here in Northeast Ohio. We rarely visit either city as we prefer to stay away from heavy traffic and difficult driving situations. Every once in a while we brave the roads and take advantage of some of the delightful offerings these cities have to share.