Late Afternoon Orange Juice and Late Night Photos

Vivid colour contrast:

Nathan and the peels left over from my juice making in Florida.

I feel like I should have something very clever, quite pithy, really, to accompany this amazing contrast of colour and shape.

It is 1:34 am on Friday morning. I just felt that I needed to go outside and take two photographs that I'd been thinking about for the last two days. One was of a flower--one of two still left blooming on a group of bushes outside the front of Megan's apartment complex. I noticed the bushes the first day that I got here--beautiful flowers covered the bushes. Now there is only a duet of blossoms nestled deep in a recess between two of the largest plants.

I took a few shots of the pink flowers still in bloom and then a few of the rest of the bush--covered in the withered petals of the main flowering period.

The other was of a nest that I found while Jon and I were outside avoiding the baby a few days ago. Jon was occupying himself by throwing his tractor and its trailer into bushes and then waiting for them to tumble down to the bottom. Or, if they didn't fall out of the shrubbery by the sidewalk--then he would poke around inside the bush or low-trimmed tree to find them and pull them out. In the middle of one of these throw and fetch sequences, he lost interest and walked on without waiting to find where the tractor and trailer had landed.

Next day, Meg mentioned that Jon had asked about them and so we went to the tree where he had poked them into the foliage. I spread the outer branches, but couldn't see either of them. What I did see was a nest. I decided that I wanted to come back later and take a photo from the bottom of the tree. A little while ago, I was pulled from the apartment, down to the outside of the apartment building. I took a couple of the botanical photos and then went over to get a night flash photograph of the nest from the bottom of the tree--up through the branches. As I got down and got ready to take my photograph, a bird flew out of the tree--quite upset.

I carefully opened the outer branches just above the nest and was able to see a single chick. It looked dead, put perhaps it was just so young that it was still living on its yolk sack. I hope that it will be OK. I didn't touch anything, just took a few photos.

While I was outside, a dozen or so geese flew overhead--honking loudly as they flew. I didn't realize that migratory birds flew at night when it was dark. Perhaps the street lights gave enough light that this group could still navigate in the middle of the night. It was a terrifically impressive noise. Like an emergency vehicle siren, it began quickly and loudly and then intensified as they flew overhead, the noise fading almost as soon as they were out of sight in the dark sky. They were close enough that I could see their heads and bodies, wings and legs, lit from below by the parking lot lights. It was like a secret moment that no one else knew about--that no one except me and those geese knows about even now.