On another one of my travels last week I visited the Te Puna Quarry Park which is about 15 mins out of Tauranga and what a lovely place it is. This time of year for us is winter so I didn't expect much in the way of colour - and yet I was very surprised. Above is one of two Monarch butterflies I spotted on a native NZ Hebe plant.
Near the entrance this wonderful Autumn coloured picnic area complete with seats, tables and sculptures.
At some point I discovered a bush walk and on the way past the stream I saw this rather large Nursery web spider hovering underneath it's web on another native plant. Normally they are only active at night and thankfully it isn't poisonous in any way.
I found these colourful flowers in the nearby Louis Braille Sensory Garden and with some of the textures I can understand why. The pansies above still provide some colour at a time when most things here are slowing down and resting.
And cyclamens plus Gazania dasies are perfect - the latter tend to flower all year round at various times and love poor soil.
Hope you enjoyed this snippet of where I've been this week - have a great weekend - more Saturday Critters here :-)
12 comments:
I haven't seen a Monarch butterfly around here for months! Lucky you to find one. You can keep the spider, though. The park looks lovely.
would be nice lazing under the tree
Beautiful flowers and butterfly. Lovely post! Thank you for linking up and sharing your post. Have a happy weekend!
Love your butterfly shot. Very lovely flowers too.
Beautiful place indeed.
Thanks for dropping by.
Quite a lot of color for this time of year. Beautiful shots, especially the butterfly.
beautiful place! lovely blooms and butterfly, too.
pansies are a wonderful flower, for a splash of fall color. the ones i plant here in new jersey, die off in winter and then rebloom in spring!!
this looks like a beautiful place, how fun to get such an amazing picture of a monarch in the wild!!!
It doesn't seem like it could really be winter there. ;)
What a pretty park - that butterfly shot is spectacular!
I love happy surprises :) And beautiful it is :)
depends on where you are in NZ, the lower parts of the country get snow, we would have to travel about 3 hours to get that, here it just gets frosty and icy but still sunny day most of the time :-)
beautiful I especially like your butterfly shot
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