Today we went to a class at Fairchild Tropical Garden. It is really close to the Deering Estate where I take classes. You might remember the post about the talk we went to there to learn about how to set up your garden to attract native birds. It is a really great place.

It was funny though, my mom forgot that she signed me up for the class because she did that about five months ago. She got an email reminder luckily.

It was cold there, I know, I know, cold in Miami? But it was! We wanted to go to the class that was about bee keeping but that had already filled up so we signed up for the class about edible plants. Well, most plants cannot grow without bees so the bee person, Dr. Noris Ledesma, was at this class and told us about bees and how they help plants.

It was a nice way to spend the day. We learned about composting, what part of the plant we eat was, homemade mosquito spray (which we made), mango propagation, and bees.

The teachers were nice and made the day fun. After the class we went to walk around by ourselves. We went in to the hot houses to get out of the cold wind. Then we noticed there was a butterfly area so we had to go in there. It was beautiful.

Best of all, they gave us a free pass for our family to go back.

smelling the all-spice leaf

the all-spice tree leaves

Dr. Noris Ledesma, the curator at FTG of Tropical Fruit

a bee hotel for solitary bees

raised beds

check out the butterflies hatching

pineapply

another bee hotel

what fruit or vegetable is what part of the plant

homemade mosquito repellant

huge white koi

scary spikes

so many cichlids

trying to get a butterfly to land on me

fruit set out for the butterflies to eat

sort of big plants at FTG