Life

A tiny orange on our orange tree.

It is nearly summer. The rains have begun. The sky darkens within minutes and pours warm water down. But the winds are southerly and so the skies are otherwise sunny and clear.

Great Orange Tips and Ceylon Blue Glassy Tigers, two of my favorite butterflies, dance through the air when the rain relents. A new generation of birds have appeared, anxiously following their mothers, beaks agape. One female red-cheeked bulbul and two fledglings appear periodically on the balcony rail, the fledglings vibrating their young wings for attention, until the mother picks a butterfly larva off one of the plants and delivers it to one or the other open mouths.

 The lone bougainvillea bloom.

The bloom has twisted flower tubes, which contain both the stamens and pistil of the plant. I'm not sure whether this is a genetic mutation that makes the plant sterile or happens after the tiny white flower falls off. It is pretty nonetheless.