Last Saturday was Mer’s day to be in charge, and she decided to head back to the Holden Arboretum for the afternoon. We joined Holden as members last October, so Mer wants to see if we can see all the trails in the arboretum before our membership runs out.

We were aiming to be there at 1:15 for a tour, but got there a little late, as there was a detour around construction, and I got pulled over for speeding; I had missed the sign that signified a change in speed limit, and was going 41 in a 25 mph zone. The officer was pleasant and let me off with a warning, but it did make us a little late for our tour. Happily, we were the only people scheduled for the tour, and the tour leader welcomed us and ran though her tour. We had an informative thirty-five minutes or so of touring the Butterfly Garden looking for and learning about butterflies. I learned that butterflies fly during the day, whereas most moths fly at night; also, moths rest with their wings horizontal while butterflies rest with their wings in a vertical position. We learned the fun fact that butterflies “pump” up their wings with fluid when they first come out of their cocoon. We saw four or five different kinds of butterflies, including a very pretty monarch butterfly.

At 2:00, we headed back into the Visitor Center to meet up with our next tour leader, a former English/biology teacher. She was going to take us on the ninety-minute Highlights Trail tour, which shows off a good selection of the arboretum without being too long or too difficult. We had covered most of the ground before on our own, but it was good to have someone narrating a tour and to learn things about the arboretum, such as how it has to dredge the ponds to keep them from filling in with sediment from all of the organic material. We also (sort of) encountered a five-foot-long snake in a shed on the side of a trail. I hate snakes, so I did not go in, but Mer confirmed that it was pretty big and that it had just eaten something. Ugh. We learned about the new area under construction, which is going to be an expansion of the rhododendron garden and looks as if it will be pretty spiffy.

We finished up our tour, but before we left, Mer wanted to check out the one area in the southern part of the arboretum that we had missed when we had been there a couple of weeks ago – the Conifer Collection. We wandered over to where the map said there was a trail, but we only found a large field with some fir trees in it. We wandered around the collection of fir trees, and are convinced that that was the collection, although we never actually found a trail. We headed back to the car, and went home.