A Tropical Immersion

As we all know, the temperatures outside of a dwelling or commercial building have been challenging these last few days. The MEDIA has even coined a name for the frozen state of the country –The Polar Vortex.

To celebrate January 8, my one year anniversary of blogging, I decided it was time for a little vacation.  My destination was  Magic Wings in Greenfield, MA. It was another adventure with my blogging buddy Laura from touringnh.com. She had been before, and I’m sure will treat us to some amazing photos from this trip in the coming weeks. I’m pretty darned proud of my own shots, but it was the sensory overload I want to try to impart to you.

I walked inside from 13° F with my arctic grade, Cabela’s finest, anorak, covering a minimum of 3 layers. My long underwear has long underwear. OK, TMI as the kids say. The temperature ten minutes later was close to 80° F and so humid my hair began to curl.

I’m hoping my shots of the flowers and gentle wings that were everywhere will give you some semblance of warmth and the smells of jasmine. There were tiny baby quail scurrying around the gardens and parrots in trees. Ripe papaya lay in the leaf-litter that was alive with a rainbow of flitting colors. I peeled off layer upon layer and sat on the floor to photograph Porkchop the Lizard. At one point I said to a gal who worked there, “It must be amazing to come to a job today where the dress code is a t-shirt and shorts.” She laughed and said, “Yeah, it’s better than in the summer when it’s really hot in here!”

For an hour and a half, time stopped and you had to slow down and just really look and smell and breathe. Life was the color and life was in the air, the scent of soil and the sound of exotic finches and quail. As you leave the conservatory and gardens, you pass through as short hall with mirrors on either side. A blast of heat hits you and your are supposed to look at yourself in the mirrors to make sure you have no “hitch-hikers,” as we call them in beekeeping. I caught a glance of my pale, winter self and immediately missed the humidity of the garden. Through the last set of doors where it hits you again, how cold and monochrome the world is right now.

1. An impossibly blue frog

2. You can’t possibly think you are hiding

3. Can’t get enough of a blue frog

4. I see you

5. Puff ball?

6. Alice in Wonderland gown

7. Orange Julius

8. Mirror Image

9. Red Puff-ball Truffella Tree? Calling Dr. Seuss!

10. Truffella Tree fruit?

11. Kama Sutra position 101?

12. No words to describe his beauty, the other side of his wings were gray.

13. Some are so tiny

14. The Glass Wings all but disappear in flight

15. There was a lot of Match.com going on in the garden

16. Blue by you

17. Intoxicating smell, something like jasmine

18. Chenille bedspreads at the summer cottage

19. Straight up butterfly porn

20. Lemon and watermelon sherbet

21. Haven’t seen YOU at the feeder lately

22. Porkchop out for a stroll

23. Lacy milk and chocolate confection

24. Bath scrubby toy?

25. Fireworks in January

26. Rorschach test

27. Large enough to be a lovely hat for me

28. Rupert the angry tortoise out for some exercise, he was fast and he was pissed off

29. Gateway to happiness