Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Tuesday, December 26, 2017 -- Mattie died 432 weeks ago today. 

Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2002. It was Mattie's first Christmas with us and I remember we had several adorable holiday outfits for him! I loved Mattie in the Santa hat and I am  so glad I always insisted on taking plenty of photos. 



Quote of the day: Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more! ~ Dr. Seuss


Since Mattie was a toddler, we have visited Butterfly World whenever we were in Fort Lauderdale. Mattie loved this park, and since butterflies remind me of Mattie, it is a meaningful experience to walk among these creatures. 



Butterfly World opened in 1988, and is the largest butterfly park in the world, and the first park of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The facility houses around 20,000 live butterflies. After retiring from a career as electrical engineer, Ronald Boender started raising butterflies and their food plants in his home in Florida. In 1984 he established MetaScience to help supply farmed butterflies to zoos and universities. After having visited England in 1985, where he met Clive Farrell (founder and owner of the London Butterfly House), he decided to create his own facility in Florida. Boender and Ferrell entered into partnership and started planning the facility, which was to be a public attraction, but also a research facility and a butterfly farm. Since then it has expanded to include the largest free flight hummingbird aviary in the United States, a Lorikeet Encounter, and an aviculture research center.

I don't recall this lovely yellow butterfly bench in the gardens before, but we stopped to take a photo on it today!

Mattie and Peter always fed the Lorikeets (a type of parrot) together! Peter continues to do this whenever we go. A Mattie tradition. 

Mattie also loved this suspension bridge. Why? Because when you walk on it, it moves. It is a clever addition to the park. 

Once in the butterfly pavilion, there is nothing but air between you and the butterflies. They fly freely around the enclosure landing on plants and sometimes people, while feeding on fruit and nectar. The butterflies come from a variety of butterfly farms located around the world. 

I love this memorial bench in the pavilion. It says.... Love is like a butterfly. It goes wherever it pleases and pleases wherever it goes. 

The pavilion has it all.... tropical plants, waterfalls, butterflies and free flying birds. But Butterfly World is not just a visual gift, it is also auditory. They pipe in very beautiful music that makes it an incredible sensory experience. 

In one portion of the pavilion is this misting tunnel. It is supposed to mimic the habitat the butterflies live in. I can assure you Mattie LOVED this tunnel and hung out there to get wet. 

This butterfly is known as the piano key butterfly. Can you see why? Look specifically at its bottom edges. 

 A glorious monarch. 

It is one thing to see these creatures, but imagine hundreds of them fluttering right by you! YOU are the visitor NOT them. 

I would say this is a Mattie Miracle butterfly. 

A blue morph. One of my favorites!! It is iridescent and hard to believe it is real. 

This incredible butterfly has violet stripes! 

You can't miss this one!

One of the wonderful birds flying passed us. 

Another blue morph. Ironically the outside of the butterfly (when it folds its wings), is brown and has what looks like an eye. 

Ever see a poinsettia like this? They grow like this in the Caribbean. 

The Wings of the World Secret Garden has one of the largest collections of flowering Passion Flower vines in the world. Passion Flower is a woody vine that has unusual blossoms. Roman Catholic priests of the late 1500's named it for the Passion (suffering and death) of Jesus Christ. They believed that several parts of the plant, including the petals, rays, and sepals, symbolized features of the Passion. The flower's five petals and five petal like sepals represented the 10 apostles who remained faithful to Jesus throughout the Passion. The circle of hairlike rays above the petals suggested the crown of thorns that Jesus wore on the day of His death.

More wonderful birds! Tomorrow we leave Florida and head home. It will be hard to leave greenery and 80 degrees behind.