Week 7

Hello, friends. Welcome back to When to Water. Last week, I promised flowers and butterflies. I hope this post does not disappoint. First, here's some pictures (sorry about the quality, they were taken with my cellphone) taken from the staff parking lot, which is, in my opinion, the prettiest part of the Garden. From there, you can see the rest of Papago Park.

Anyone with allergies knows that alot of plants are blooming right now. This makes this the Garden's prettiest time of year. This year, some plants bloomed earlier than usual because of unseasonably warm weather. Here are some of the cooler flowers in the Garden:

And of course, butterflies. The Garden set up a tent of butterflies last week. Shots fired, Butterfly Wonderland! Your butterfly monopoly is over!

They call the tent the Butterfly Exhibit, which is not the most original name.  I have strained for an embarrassingly long amount of time to come up with a witty nickname for the Exhibit, but the best I have been able to come up with is "you say butterfly, I say fallow (fallow, fallow). I would see five problems with calling the exhibit this:

1. It's butterflies, not Beatles
2. It makes no sense
3. It's too long
4. While it is true that they could be growing some flowers there instead of hosting butterflies, it's Arizona, and all land here is fallow. 
5. It's an incredibly stupid name

 I am very ashamed of that idea. Please, smart and creative readers, come up with something better than "you say butterfly, I say fallow (fallow, fallow)" and more original than the Butterfly Exhibit (or maybe just come up with more reasons my ideas was bad). 

Around the tent, there are Canadian snow birds, orange slices, and butterflies (in other words, the makings of a good time). This is not the first time the Garden has done something like this, but they went above and beyond this year. They have a wall dedicated to the metamorphoses of butterflies. There are hundreds of eggs, dozens of caterpillars, and a couple of cocoons. I would like to believe that the reason there are more caterpillars. I have no ideas what explains the diminishing numbers. 

The Garden can be brutal too. Early today, I saw a large cactus wren chasing a roadrunner. The roadrunner stopped in front of me, and I saw something grey in its mouth. It had a dead and bloody nestling of the wren. The cactus wren caught up to the roadrunner, but it just stood two feet away from the bigger bird. The roadrunner swallowed its prey in one bite. It was so full that I do not think it could move. I do have video of the whole affair.  It is disgusting, so I will not show you. This story really reconceptualizes the whole Roadrunner cartoons.

Somehow, I have rambled through a whole blog post. I was planning on updating everyone on my project, but I guess I will save that for next week. Thanks for reading, WTW.