The botanical gardens and the attack of the killer frog

Saturday was a gorgeous fall day, warm and clear with brilliant blue sky and yellow leaves, and Jim and I decided to try our luck birding at the Botanical gardens. While we didn’t end up seeing a lot of birds, we did see lots of cool plants, model trains, and the attack of the killer frog. We started off with a yummy lunch at Duran’s, where the red chili sauce has, in my opinion, great flavor with just the right amount of heat. Then, feeling a bit stuffed, we headed off for the biopark.

We started off with a visit to the aquarium. It is small, but a nice little aquarium. My favorite exhibit was the jellyfish, especially the big tank of moon jellies. It is very peaceful and meditative watching them all undulate.

After the aquarium, we headed to the botanical gardens. They were having a special model train exhibit, and the first two walled gardens had big train tracks set up in them, with very happy men showing off their trains. After admiring the trains, we walked through the Japanese garden, which is a fairly new exhibit. I had never seen it before. We sat for a while on a bench across from a big waterfall and watched the mallards swim around in the pond. Then we went to the heritage farm exhibit. There were two percherons, a breed of draft horse, in a pen. Draft horses are very large, heavy horses that were bred to pull heavy wagons, plows etc. They are work horses. These horses had hooves twice as big as the hooves of a riding horse. I would not want to be stepped on by one of these! They were very peaceful and mellow and had wonderful eyelashes, as you can see.

Then we went through two greenhouses. One was a Mediterranean garden. I really liked these blue flowers, although I have no idea what they are.

The second greenhouse had cacti and succulents. I love the shapes and patterns of these plants. When I took this first shot, I had no idea there was a cricket on the cactus! (I guess you can't really see the cricket when the photo is this small - it's on the left side of the whitish center part.)

This one reminds me of baby owls.

Our last stop was at the large garden scale train exhibit. It was here that we witnessed the attack of the killer frog. In the railroad setup, there is a farm. The farmhouse is sort of around the corner, and the farmers had no idea of the horror that was about to take place at the barn. While the cows chewed their cuds

And the goats lay in the grass

A frightening creature emerged from the stream that runs by the farm. It was a killer bullfrog! Slowly, hop by hop, it approached the barn. Closer

And closer.

Finally, it went inside the barn, and camped out among the miniature hay bales. It was getting late at this point, and we wondered if the frog spends all his nights in the barn, and if not, what possessed him to enter it this time. I guess without frequent visits to the botanical garden, we’ll never know.