Tuesday, July 14, 2009

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.



5 comments:

Suzanne said...

Those gardens look lovely and I am sure you would have had a wonderful day out.

Do you live on th edge of the city.

ladydi said...

Hi, Suzanne! We don't really live on the edge of the city - it's about 23 miles from where we live. I'm a big baby about driving in city traffic. Larry is much better about it than I am, but even he feel a bit intimidated when there are four lanes of traffic all going ten mph above the speed limit and you're trying to figure out which lane you need to be in.

Owen said...

Hey Di ! Sounds like a great day out... did you ever go to Longwood gardens near Philadelphia ? If not, you should head over there and get your Aunt B. to take you, she loves that place...

Thanks for the comment on the sunsets, we've been getting some amazing ones lately, because of the volcano that blew up in June on a Russian island north of Japan...

Connie said...

Oh what a wonderful place to visit! It sounds beautiful! I went to a butterfly garden that sounds similar to what you saw on vacation a few years back. It was so much fun. For some reason, the butterflies seemed to be attracted to my younger son. They kept landing on him over and over again. He even had several on him at once a few times. Lovely photos, Diana. I don't blame you for wanting to stay out of heavy traffic. I avoid that as much as possible too.

Hope you have a great weekend. :)

Suzanne said...

Thanks for the information Diana, it has just dawned on me to answer my questions on comments and to check others, slowly catching on.