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WEDNESDAY
A love of butterflies is sort of a requisite obsession for adolescent girls. This phase of preoccupation with fluttery creatures often occurs somewhere between a fascination with unicorns and a deep love of all things dolphin. Sadly, like the ethereal winged beauties themselves, the phase is short-lived—and its fading represents the beginning of the end of innocence. Before you know it, your baby girl is peeling the butterfly stickers off her binder and replacing them with pictures of bird-chested boy-band members. If you want to prolong that “not a girl, not yet a woman” phase, keep your budding young lady away from the unhatched specimens at the Brookside Gardens’ “Wings of Fancy” Live Butterfly Show. Though the exhibition features beautiful varieties from all over the world, it also demystifies the bug. Putting the gooey reality of the butterfly life cycle on display is sure to force a young woman into a consuming love of horses before she’s quite ready. I mean, there’s a reason that slimy eggs and chrysalides aren’t pictured on the baby T’s at Limited Too. The exhibition is on view from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (to Sept. 19) at Brookside Gardens, 1800 Glenallan Ave., Wheaton. $4. (301) 962-1400. (Sarah Godfrey)