Before moving to The Villages, I was a volunteer tour guide at a large indoor butterfly garden (Brookside Gardens, Montgomery County, Maryland). We had butterflies from the US, Central America, and from Asia and usually had around 500 flying at one time. People loved the Blue Morphos from Central America!
I mainly gave tours to 2nd and 3rd grade kids and that was fun. However, my favorite was when groups of senior citizens from some of the nursing homes would visit. Quite a few had Alzheimers or dementia and were just blank in their wheelchairs. Sometimes when a butterfly would land on them, their eyes would brighten up visibly and a smile would appear on their face.
My wife and I have milkweed for Monarchs here in The Villages as well as passionflower vine for Gulf Frittelaries. Pretty good crop of butterflies this year.
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