Two Do DBG

I love Desert Botanical Gardens this time of year.  The gentle glow of luminarias, special exhibits, shadows that make cactus look bigger than life . . . ah so much fun if you have a camera in hand.  I prefer the time of day referred to as 'blue light'.  It is after the gold of sunset, but before everything turns to either a dark black look or, with light pollution, a muddy gray.  Tom and Greg share their recent trip to the Gardens where their main focus was to stay until the blue hour was in play.

Thanks guys.  Mom will love this post.

Sonoran Lights

Jon and Phyllis have checked out the new Sonoran Lights exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden. WOW!  I can hardly wait to get back and go check it out for myself.

This exhibit is all about lights, but not just the lights placed around the Garden. Ambient light changes from the blue hour to full night made a huge difference in the way some of these looked.  So appreciate Jon and Phyllis for sharing.

Desert Botanical Gardens

DBG is building a new butterfly exhibit that will open in 2017.  In the meantime, they are offering butterfly walks on some Saturdays.  Instead of having hundreds of butterflies in a small space, you are guided to butterfly friendly areas of the garden in search of butterflies and caterpillars.  It turned out to be much more fun than I anticipated.  I was not expecting so many cactus to be in bloom.  Perhaps it is the abundance of recent rain.

Fortunately, the walk is leisurely and that gave us plenty of time to photograph flowers along the trail.

Not surprisingly, it takes a whole lot more work to get good photographs of butterflies that are free.

They have several live caterpillars on display and our tour guide, Kim, offered to go back after the tour and help us photograph them outside of their enclosures.  The yellow banded caterpillar will become a Monarch butterfly.  I don't remember what the other caterpillar is destined to become.

There is a lot going on at the gardens.  If you haven't been there in a while you just might think of going soon.  The weather is getting so nice.  Their annual fall plant sale is next weekend.  Thanks for sharing our fun.  Thanks to Rick, Barbara, Phyllis and Tom for sharing their photos.