Quail Botanical Gardens

Parker and I spent a few hours at Quail on Monday and had so much fun. We usually just head right for the "Seeds of Wonder" garden, which is targeted to toddlers and which is totally entertaining for him. But this time we walked through the main gardens to the newer children's garden, which is targeted to older kids but still lots of fun for him. Even better, the children's garden was practically deserted since school was back in session, so we had the place to ourselves! It was mostly a cool, cloudy day, so we didn't get too hot. This garden has a huge treehouse, an area with building blocks (where we sat on the ground and spent a lot of time making huge towers), a "mountain stream" with plastic boats for racing, and a raised vegetable garden. We saw lots of lizards, and found this butterfly lounging on the ground in the veggie garden (hopefully he was just "resting" and wasn't injured or sick...). I seized the opportunity to get a quick pic of Parker with the butterfly on his hand--that's usually not an easy feat! On the way back to the car we walked through a few different areas of the main garden, checking out awesome succulents and the huge waterfall in the "tropical rainforest" area. A great day.