Butterfly Day at the Desert Botanical Gardens

A few weeks ago, we headed out to the Desert Botanical Gardens.  I love the botanical gardens.  I especially love that, once a month, they offer a free admission day.  In the spring, that even includes admission into the butterfly exhibit, which is amazing in a way that I can barely even begin to describe.

Since it's ridiculously late and this post is seriously image-heavy, I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking...

Boo, getting ready to load up and hydrating before a long, hot afternoon.

LOVE these glass sculptures.  I have no idea how they don't get broken in bad weather.

All ready to spend the afternoon looking at amazing things.

Turns out that, this year, instead of offering free admission for the day, they offer free admission for half of the day.  We ended up arriving about ten minutes before they wanted to start letting people in and, given that it would have cost quite a hefty sum for tickets for all of us, we opted to hang outside the gates and have lunch first.  There were lots of neat things to look at out there, too.

I so love this.  It makes me want one somewhere in the house.  As if that wouldn't be pretentious.

 Once inside, there was SO much to see!

Enthralled.

Riding in style.

She was happier in there than she appears to be.  Honest.

I love this tree.

Hummingbird!

And then...butterflies!

Boo was SO EXCITED.

She knew she wasn't allowed to touch the butterflies...so she bent down and kissed one instead. <3

I adore this child. <3

A Texas Mountain Laurel...which I never saw in Texas.  It smelled like grapes.

A really cool art installation.

Quail!

Bug LOVES to run!

She's chatting with a chipmunk that was in the plants.

They got SO close.

See?

 

These lovely women - who's names are escaping me - chatted with us for quite awhile.  Very nice ladies!

 

Terrible photo of me, but Bug is so stinkin' adorable.  That smile!

There was a LOT that we didn't get to see.  With only spending half of the day there, we basically saw the butterflies, took a short walk and stopped for lunch before heading out.  There's quite a lot more.  (Seriously.  We've been probably four times so far and there's still one half of the place we haven't seen, yet.)  We're looking forward to heading out again soon and taking some of the other trails.  And, of course, seeing the butterflies again!