Butterfly Enthusiasts - Sunday Family Outing

 

Lauren with butterfly friend

 Wildseed Farm

Continuing with the whole butterfly theme, we had a much more pleasant experience with them once we reached our destination outside of Fredericksburg, TX.  If you haven’t been to Wildseed Farms, http://www.wildseedfarms.com/index.html , about 7 miles east of Fredericksburg on Hwy 290, I highly suggest it.  It’s an enchanting family outing in the Texas hill country set amongst wildflowers, beautiful landscaped gardens, a great gift shop, speciality foods, and butterflies!  They have a butterfly “haus” (get it?  It’s near a historic Texas German town…you see a lot of that spelling for “house” around Fredericksburg).  Inside the haus is a butterfly garden paradise, definitely worth the price of admission.  There are at least a dozen species and so many of them that it’s like a dazzling firework display in slow motion (fortunately, none of them explode).  All those tiny colorful wings just fluttering everywhere, it is truly breathtaking.  There are docents inside that enjoy sharing information about their small captives; thereby enhancing the educational visit.

During our walk among the Wildseed Farm “trial plots” we discovered the most butterfly prolific plant – the Blue Mist Flower.  No where else on the grounds did we see more Monarch butterflies buzzing about them among those.  It is really no more than a weed, but butterflies just love it!  We’ll be looking for that plant in the springtime.

 

Wildseed Farms claim they are the largest working wildflower farm in the U.S, with 200 acres at their headquarters, and another 800 acres in Eagle Lake.  Although our visit did not coincide with their wildflowers blooming in full season, it was well compensated with manicured wildflower landscaping.  We visited on October 18, during the Monarch Butterfly Celebration, held in conjunction with the University of Kansas project known as “Monarch Watch.”  We participated in the tagging of a monarch and watched them being released. 

We learned a few things from the Monarch Watch (http://monarchwatch.org/biology/cycle1.htm) representatives .  Not all monarchs migrate.  There are genetically different species.  The “summer generation”  just have the usual life span of a couple of 2 – 5 weeks.  While the “final generation” live about 8-9 months.   What determines the change has something to do with the temperature in which they are born.  In addition we found out how the butterfly’s sex is determined – see below:

Monarch Watch had a give-away drawing in which our youngest, Lauren, had her name selected.  She choose a butterfly guide book,which she proudly took to school on Monday to show her 2nd grade class.  Her faced beamed when they called her name.  There’s nothing like watching the thrill on a child’s face when they feel special: eyes light up and a permanent grin remains long after the moment is gone – a glow remains for hours.

LBJ Memorial Park

After our 3 hour excursion at the wildflower farm, we continued our family outing at LBJ Memorial Park (http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/ class=”hiddenSpellError” pre=”">spdest/findadest/parks/lyndon_b_johnson/)  , just a few more miles east on 290.  We enjoyed a hamburger cookout with two neighboring Longhorns and a few flies.  Our oldest announced that it is much more fun to eat indoors away from the outdoor pests–Miss Wilderness USA, she is not.  We attempted to cook out over a grill with some mesquite wood we had, however, the fire did not come in time, so we cooked it with a propane cook stove.  Finally, after an hour, the fire was going and we roasted all of 4 marshmallows because we ate too much and Charley forgot the graham crackers for the s’mores.  Although he may claim that it was my fault for placing the graham crackers in the pantry, rather than leaving them in the shopping bag with the rest of the cook-out food.  We debated that one for a while until we both agreed that no one is completely to blame (although I still think it’s HIS fault).

After stuffing ourselves we visited The Sauer-Beckmann Farm – Rural Life, 1900-1918, just a walk over from our picnic site.  It was like we stepped back in time,visiting our country “neighbors.”  The setting is as real as they could make it.  There are staff and volunteers dressed in

Working the farm

period outfits and just working the farm like it were yesteryear.  Life was all about surviving; they had to make everything they needed to live.  The experience increased our appreciation of how much easier it is to live with our modern appliances and easy cooking.  In a minor way it reminded me of Charley and my Peace Corps experiences where we had to wash clothes by hand and prepare food from scratch.

Have you ever seen grapevines in Texas wrapped around  a live oak tree?  It’s Texas’ answer to Tarzan in the jungle.  Those vines are so strong they support a good deal of weight, they really more like a tree than a vine.  If live oaks weren’t so strong there’s no way they could survive the vice-like grip of the vine.  The girls and myself tested the strength of those vines as our last endeavor for our trip.  We had a great time monkeying around.

 

 

All in all our Sunday journey to a part of the Texas hill country was full of fun, laughter, new experiences and learning.  Welcomed sleep was the last of our experience when we arrived back to our comfortable home.