Well, I have been home over two weeks after my sojourn in Jakarta, and I have been so busy. The garden is a disaster. I hear that it barely rained the whole time I was away, so there have been a few losses. I headed back to work the first Monday after I got back and it's sooo busy, and I still have to submit the final reports for my work in Jakarta, so please excuse me if I have been a little remiss in responding to your comments and visiting my favourite blogs.
As a peace offering I thought you might enjoy these photos that I took at the Butterfly Garden in Singapore's Changi airport. I love Changi. There is so much to do there, it must be one of the easiest airports in the world to while away the hours in transit. My favorite things, apart from the butterflies, are to check out the orchid displays, snap up beautiful Asian trinkets from Madam Butterfly (in two of the three terminals), and enjoy a great meal - this visit it was lunch at a vegetarian Indian restaurant.
But back to the butterflies... I am a self-confessed terrible photographer of any fast moving wildlife, but I discovered there are slow butterflies (my kind), and there are others whose wings seem to be a continual blur. Maybe the slow ones were a bit sluggish after lunch, but all the better for us to enjoy them!
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| I saw some butterflies like this in Kalimantan (Borneo) on our orangutan trip. They were spectacular and seem to range up to about 7 or 8 inches across. |
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| Butterfly food station - lots of delicious pineapple. |
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| This small, dark and handsome specimen had a bright orange body, beautifully coordinated with the ixora! |
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| Pentas seemed to be the most popular plant in town. |
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| This was one of the more fluttery varieties, so it is a little out of focus, though in my defence, it did seem to have a preference for dining upside down, which surely added a degree of difficulty. |
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| These were beautifully camouflaged to resemble dead leaves. |
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| An embarrassment of riches |
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| There were also some interesting pitcher plants in the display. |
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| Here the underside of one of the blue patterned butterflies can be seen lower right. |
Marisa, so sorry to hear about your garden losses...I am sure you will be able to replace them as time goes by.
ReplyDeleteTraveling for work and writing reports on your return can be quite tedious... I know (said she with prior experience.) Sometimes I would start writing on the plane when I was headed home, and while everything was still fresh in my mind.
Now those gorgeous butterfly photos are to die for...thanks for posting them, I loved them all.
Maybe some other worldwide airports can take a page out of Changi airport's displays and create some of their own....travelers with long layovers would love it.
Thanks Virginia. I have taken a few tiny steps to fill in the gaps in the garden by adding a couple of tricolour Chinese Jasmines to the front garden, and a punnet of cosmos seedlings and sprinkling of the more exotic cosmos seeds I bought earlier in the year. And you are right about writing up reports while the memory is fresh. I'm still waiting some info to complete them. Hopefully it will all fall into place.
DeleteOh I agree - a long layover in Changi airport sounds like heaven to me! I love those black and white butterflies too! I wonder if some slices of pineapple out in the yard would attract butterflies mmm.
ReplyDeleteThe pineapple would definitely be worth a try, just on the off chance you could attract such glamourous visitors.
DeleteA butterfly house at an airport - should be more. Wouldn't air travel be so much more enjoyable ...and you are right about it being dry Marisa, it's been very dry and quite hot. Saturday's rain was our first decent rain in ages.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, Saturday's rain will save a few of my plants that were hovering on the brink, and we will get a little more rain from now on.
DeleteBeautiful butterflies!!!! What incredible shots!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kacky. They are such gorgeous creatures.
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