Our Butterfly Adventure

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

On Monday DH and I visited a Butterfly "farm" in Massachusetts.  Our DS is away at camp for two weeks, and so I'm arranging some day trips to places he would never be caught dead in.  DH was being a really good sport about coming with me, although I'm sure it ranked right up there with dental surgery for him.  To add insult to injury we had to go right by "Yankee Candle Village" to get there, so yes I did convince him that we needed to stop here.  Room after room filled with candles, dishes, gourmet cooking equipment and a great XMAS shop....just how he loves to spend an afternoon...NOT.  Anyway Magic Wings was truly an amazing place.  It is a huge greenhouse filled with exotic plants and thousands of incredibly gorgeous butterflies everywhere.  They seem to be very comfortable around people, and one actually had a "thing" for DH.

At first I thought it was my camera bag (DH volunteered to carry this for me so I could focus on taking pictures).

See that's his new friend who instantly became DHs BFF.  She quickly moved from the bag to DH...

She attached herself to him....after a few minutes we learned that she was laying an egg on him.  When she was finished one of the workers actually collected the egg to see if they could save it.  We're told it's "one in a million" that they will do this.  My DH is truly a butterfly chick magnet.

After she was all finished she just hitched a ride with DH on the camera bag....

They seem to do a lot of drinking which may account for the indiscriminate "egg laying" behavior.

That one seems to enjoy a good "Cosmopolitan" which could account for the loss of a major portion of her wing...I'm think bar fight.

So I took 500 photos at Magic Wings and when I downloaded them to my computer, that was the end.  I had been worried about space since I was running low and my laptop had become really slow....well the 500 photos did it in.  I was bordering on a nervous breakdown.  I did have backups of everything, but I was envisioning a nightmare of getting all my software, music, pictures moved over.  I bought the new laptop, brought it home, plugged my back-up drive in and within two hours my new computer looked exactly like my old one.  Nothing was lost....it was a miracle.  So I'm back up and running, although this new desktop with the track pad is taking some time to get used to.  I'll put some of the really pretty butterfly photos in a discussion in the Photography Group.

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Sharon, we were in Deerfield, Mass at Magic Wings.  Thanks everyone...it's amazing that they sort of "posed" for pictures.  It sounds like there are similar places all over the country.  If you have one near you, it's a really cool experience.  Andrea, that green and black butterfly is gorgeous....we didn't see any with that coloring.

[Nicky, Riley & Boris]

Wonderful pictures. I love them. What a marvelous place.

[Sharon & Monty]

Wow!  where is this? we are headed to Mass in the very near future, I hope it is within our striking distance.. Lovely pics!

[GBK]

What a Great Day!  Neat story of you DH and his new admirer.  Will be waiting to check out all the photos in the Photography group Jane :)

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

LOL, Jane, competition from a female butterfly for your DH's affections!

Loved the pictures and the story, sounds like a perfect day to me (well, except for the computer); we have an indoor butterfly "haven" here in Chicago and it's one of my favorite places on earth. can't wait to see the photos!

[Camilla and Darwin]

So glad your files were all safe! Beautiful photos, that sounds like a fun day to me. :-) I will go check out that photograph group discussion.