Norfolk Botanical Gardens

This was the day I had been looking forward to for a month.  Going to the Botanical Gardens.  I was not disappointed.  Norfolk Botanical Gardens was beautiful even at the end of summer with not a whole lot in bloom.  The big attraction was the butterfly house.  The gardens are on 155 acres and have 48 distinct themed gardens.  We only saw a handful while we were there!

Our first stop was the butterfly house.  It was amazing.  I had so much fun trying to capture them on my camera.  Also realized later that I should have stopped my camera even more.  Even though I got a lot of great pictures some of them had blurry wings.  They were going faster than I thought.  Here are a few of my favorites.

After the butterfly house we just walked around and looked at a lot of the other gardens.  This was Chris in the Roman Garden. 

 And he and I in the Azaela Garden.

We went to the NATO tower and got this beautiful picture looking out toward the ocean.  This lane was lined with blooming Crepe Myrtle trees.

This is the guys on one of the benches near the wildflower garden and under a huge magnolia tree.

                            

Here are a couple of flowers that I had never seen before.  I thought they were both really cool.

 Cat Whisker flower

Shrimp plant

 Here are a few various flowers taken today.

                          

The guys liked the gardens a lot more than they thought they would.  I loved it.  I wish we had one near us.  I would have an annual membership and would be there all the time. 

On the way back to mom and dad's the guys were starving.  I was telling Chris about the Mexican resturant that we went to last time. La Plaza de Azteca.  We stopped there for lunch.  They have great food.  They have the most amazing white sauce for dipping chips in.  I need to find the recipe.