Brookside Gardens ‘Wings of Fancy’

One of the Brookside Gardens conservatories is currently dedicated to the annual live butterfly exhibit - ‘Wings of Fancy.’ It was very warm on the day we were there. The butterflies were very active but I didn’t linger as long as in previous years.

Butterflies are calming and invigorating at the same time. They are calming because they are so beautiful in their coloring and shape and the way they move. A better name for them would be ‘flutterbies’ to describe their motion. They are invigorating because they are in motion most of the time on warm days. Many of them open and close their wings even while they rest.

But they are short-lived creatures. Their wings become battered in a short while even in the relative protection of the conservatory. We know their life cycle: egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly - with the near magical metamorphosis taking place in the chrysalis phase. Enjoy the slide show from my walk through the 2013 Brookside Wings of Fancy!