Wednesday, 27 January 2016

Friday Jan 22nd: Miracle Garden

Today Rob’s taking us to the Miracle Garden, a riot of flowers in the desert. It’s basically a huge garden where flowers are woven into images and structures. Here are Rob and I near the start.
This is a 20 ft tall peacock. Today in mid-winter it’s around 25 degrees, so I’m not sure how they manage to keep the flowers going as the temperatures climb to a maximum of 50 (122 F) when even the peacock has to sit down.
The colours are quite stunning, as can be seen. It almost doesn’t matter what shapes they use to display the flowers on. 
Clearly, there’s a lot of intricate design gone into the garden, and perhaps a clue as to who thought it up comes from the next photo, with the windmill: it’s definitely got a Dutch feel to it.
And the Dutch do like their bikes!
Now Jane and I are outside our dream home covered in flowers from head to toe. A few months of dead-heading all that and I’d be reaching for the weed killer.
After the garden, there are the butterfly houses where the butterflies are in free flight. They’re impossible to photograph in the air but are quite lovely when they land especially with wings open (not often). I got lucky a few times, as seen next.

It’s also difficult to give an idea of size. These were big butterflies, and fortunately they seemed to be happy to occasionally land on the visitors. The little girl’s look of wonder is priceless.
This one is on my hand.
And then a butterfly on Jane’s back- or is she sprouting angel wings? No smart answers, please.
We could have done with some information on the different types of butterfly and habitats; nevertheless it was a beautiful experience from both the garden and the butterflies, all the more because of its desert location.  















































































































































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