Yesterday was a day of blue butterflies. We visited Reiman Gardens in Ames, spending nearly all our time in the butterfly wing, taking pictures and reveling in the profusion of fluttering beauty.
About 800 butterflies spend their brief lives in this enclosure, delighting viewers who amble through. My husband excelled at catching the large blue butterflies on the fly, while I did better at close-ups.
Only it was nearly impossible to get a close-up of the large blue butterflies, which the hallway chart identified as Common Blue Morpho. Immediately on landing, the bright wings folded shut, revealing only the brown spotted bottoms.
We took many pictures, trying to catch these blue beauties on the fly, and last evening enjoyed reviewing them and sharing our best captures.
The butterfly is often used as a symbol for new life and resurrection. It’s easy to see why. The humble (frequently homely) caterpillar crawls up a branch, appears to “die” inside a tomb-like chrysalis, and emerges to fly with beautiful wings.
He created an amazing array of creatures for our enjoyment and his glory. What mind could have imagined the miraculous transformation of caterpillar to butterfly? Only the ultimate Creative.
Who doesn’t love the butterfly? Butterflies have inspired artwork, jewelry, story, and poetry. Poet Robert Frost painted effective word pictures, as he does in this poem about his own Blue-Butterfly Day:
And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.
Glenda Faye Mathes 
What a wonderful day! Thanks for sharing, I love butterflies. With all these bug chemicals used on grass and farms they are disappearing.