Brookside Gardens – June 2016

I had guests over the past two weeks and Brookside Gardens is one of the places that just about everyone enjoys. We got their early enough to be part of the first group into the Wings of Fancy butterfly exhibit. The butterflies inside were pretty much the same as we saw in late May that that I posted about early this month. I did get to see caterpillars for the black swallowtail. I had them on parsley growing on my deck a few years back – so many of them that the parsley was demolished!

There were insects in the gardens that were active because the day was already warm: dragonflies like the garden rooms that include a water feature and

Bubble bees seem to be everywhere.

There was a mockingbird that made lots of noise from the pinnacle of a small tree.

Every bush in the rose garden seemed to be blooming.

I like the ones that seemed to glow from within in the bright sunlight.

A succulent has been planted in an urn where it was blooming and spilling over the side.

The early summer flowers were at every turn.

The tadpoles near the Tea Garden pavilion were huge – about 6 inches long. since the tail was still so long I wondered how long it would be before they made the transformation to frogs.

The native dogwoods are already done with blooming for the year but the Asian ones were still in bloom. I liked the soft pink of one so much that I took a lot of pictures of it. My three favorite images are below.