Butterflies Alive!

Butterflies Alive!

"Imagine walking through a lush garden filled with color and native greenery as a live butterfly flutters right by your nose or maybe even lands on your head! ..The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History's Butterfly Pavilion allows for an intimate look at over 1,000 of these magnificent creatures as they bask in the sun or sip nectar from flowers". (quoted from the Museum's website)

Only one week left to visit this fabulous exhibit. The Butterflies will be back to the Eucaluptus Grove at Ellwood in the Spring, in the meantime do take advantage of this wonderful experience. Admission to the Museum of Natural History is nominal and very worth it! The site is historic, and the exhibits at the Museum are absolutely fabulous for people of all ages.

I recall taking my elderly and fragile mother to the exhibit a few years ago. She literally came 'alive' watching the butterflies dance in the exhibit solarium. When one landed on her jacket she laughed with delight. I had not seen her so animated in a long time.

Mom always loved to garden and grow flowers...she was raised on a farm and was a natural. Her children and grandchildren all inherited her green thumb gene. I began growing milk-weed in my own garden just to invite the monarch caterpillars to visit. Milk-weed is truly a weed. It grows without help and re-seeds regularly and easily...everywhere...and monarch caterpillars love it. The wonderful thing about the caterpillars is....they turn into Monarchs! My garden is therefore always filled with Monarch Butterflies dancing in my garden.

This Exhibit is also a delight for small children. My little great nephews are crazy about Butterflies Alive! They know everything about the process from caterpillar through chrysalis to butterfly..and they learned it all at the Museum! When they visit my garden they are always on the hunt for the little crysalids hiding in the garden.

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History 2559 Puesta del Sol Road, Santa Barbara, CA; 805 682-4711; for more information: http://www.sbnature.org/