My husband and I spent the past weekend in “the city”, which in this region means San Francisco rather than New York. I have no idea what people here call Los Angeles. Mostly no one refers to it. In any case, we were shantey singing on a boat on Saturday night and Morris dancing in Golden Gate Park on Sunday. We spent the night with a friend, who certainly knew we did such things but had not previously been exposed to us bedecked in kit. Her reaction reminded me that many people, including many of my friends, consider folk dancing and singing to be odd hobbies.

This behavior certainly is rare, since most people don’t partake. We are among partakers multiple times per week, so we perhaps don’t feel as odd as we should.

Our Sunday event was outside the Conservatory of Flowers, and in the spirit of, Who knows when I will pass this way again, I sneaked a visit in during one of the three sets. My lack of devotion is possibly why the Morris Ring disdains women dancers. The Conservatory is a greenhouse that includes a butterfly room. Almost the moment I walked in, I felt a butterfly on my head, and indulged in a rare selfie.

I was trying to capture a monarch moving its wings and didn’t realize there were two of them in this shot until I started to crop it. I wonder what they are doing?

Many of the monarchs were pinned to the exit.

The other types of butterflies seemed fine cavorting among the plants.

I hope you can see the vein-like structures in the wings of the last one. I could have found out what those structures are, or what those two butterflies were doing, as well as the names of all these butterflies, but I am feeling a bit of information overload these days. Perhaps all the learning curves associated with changes–new geographic location, docent work, condo board, loads of new acquaintances–is just a little too much for me to process. Or perhaps it is Age-Related. In any case, I absorbed sensations rather than facts during this visit.