Northwesterly winds and many mini storms...rain, rain and rain...

The continuous northwest winds blew, the sky became enveloped in gray and winds took up highspeed, turned suddenly turned into mini storms. This is what we have been facing for several weeks now, may even be more than a month. 

After the strong winds, thunder and lightening, all at once, water gushed down, ending in heavy downpours. Then suddenly, it all stopped and everything became peaceful again.

Although, it submerged land, destroyed crops, it relieved us from the scorching heat and the trees, flowers grew profusely and all the greens flourished. 

Summer colors ........bright and beautiful

Although, I say summer colours here, I have a lot of seasonal and permanent plants flowering at the same time. After the summer heat and rains, they all blossomed together. Like, the late winter or spring ones, cosmos, gerbera and dianthus, they adjusted to the summer heat and blossomed to their true colors. And the frail and dainty cosmos plants and flowers fluttered in the wind and rain and the plants grew to taller heights than usual winter ones. And the frangipanis, just when they started to get their leaves, bloomed to solid fuchsia!

Hope you enjoy the colour array....

Miraculous sunsets and evening skies

As the sunsets, a sudden stillness approaches as if a veil has been drawn over the dayas its been desbribed. The night covers the day with darkness. Then, at daybreak, the silence is broken by the chirping of birds as the sun rises, ushering an opening of a bright and beautiful day. The usual rhythm of the day! What lies in between the changes, are the magic of enchanting sunsets and sunrises, at specific moments and locations and it becomes ever memorable moments to capture in the mind, by not just its captivating colours, the majestic aura, romantic mood, but just simply being magical! Such are two such moments below that each one may have experienced in their rare or routine moments, depending on where you are located. 

It was after one of those seasonal norwester storms. These skyscapes came after a mini storm. And the clouds were collecting again or not even all washed after the brief rain. More was coming, one could see. 

It was most likely the first northwester winds that brought rain this time of the year. With the strong winds, of course, came the lightening and thunder, followed by pouring rains. It came, all at once and as the sky was already getting all set with clouds filling up the spaces. Although, the as much as the winds swept strong and the thunder roared and lightening struck hard, yet the rains only poured only little, felt much of the clouds were left for the rains, to come at a later time point.  

When the rain stopped, the air felt very fresh, and a nice wet breeze kept blowing. It had been really hot, the previous days, I thought of breathing some nice clean air from the fresh rains. And when I went up to the roof top, I found out what a magnificient sky was waiting! It felt much larger than usual, and the wind kept blowing and the clouds sailed from here to there, one end to the other. I was watching more the sky, and got drowned in all this movement going on and stuck in awe by the gray and white clouds meeting and filling up each space that was available. Seemed someone was organizing them for some next big event. It was a busy, beautiful layout of clouds, tonal variations were there in the evening sky, a sudden brightness amidst the reddish tinge and few white clouds were left too, and then gray tonal arrangements of rain clouds blending one with the others, covering the entire sky. I went back home and quickly came back with my camera, took some magnificient skyscape snapshots, shown above. 

Then suddenly I looked on the other side, my gaze was struck by the beauty that lay before my eyes! 

I wasn't prepared for this sudden splendor, so was taken a back. As I had only come to get some fresh air and hadn't seen that it was sunset time, since I was too busy with the stormy sky, and check it more storm should come by night again. I realized, I was lucky to have witnessed this moment of such an unsual sunset colours that th epost storm atmosphere created! The sun was setting in a splendid tone of rust orange, fiery yet in wet smudge from the fresh rains, and the moisture cloud laden sky played the trick, bringing the colours to a natural blend. It was simply captivating, as the sun shown through the orange-rust aura at the backdrop. 

And the glow from the setting sun, created a silohuette of the trees. The dark shadows of the early spring leaves, felt like birds waiting, or had just come safely back home after the havoc. With time the tones of gray set in, with its darker tones appearing as the sun dipped down leaving an emptiness in the surrounding.

Again, as I looked back at the sky, after the sunset, a kind of light brightened the sky from nowhere, and the cool breeze was still on. blwoing with ease. 

Then as I looked back at the sunset the glow at the horizon had disappeared like magic, and empty colours felt like a washed canvas, as the rain clouds had smudged and slowly went on covering the sky above, while a clear border became visible at the horizon.  As if bringing an end to a story. 

Now you can just compare, on another set of sunset series, from a memorable desert trip, we visited and watch a completely different magical and mystical moment.  How different each one is!

As the enormity of the desert sky gives a spiritual feeling and the sun becomes smaller and smaller before it dips below the horizon, the vast sky changing its colours and making the sun feel like a tiny ball and the beige-brown stretch of endless desert sand and the dunes, brings a sudden stillness and silence, that a drop of pin could be heard. All at once, one feels so tiny as if the vastness of it all tells us how little we in the universe we belong. Later on, as the darkness enveloped, the desert sky played the magic with an amazing glitter of stars sparkling like diamond dusts sprayed on a huge open canvas, as we stared and gazed at the sparkling night sky. 

After the beautiful first sunset, next morning rain came heavily after the night storm, to bring the real downpour we were all waiting for...felling a lot of trees causing losses for many and submerging roads yet cooling the atmosphere, , and drenching the corners of our hearts from the heat that was burning before.......and making the spring greens, fresh and clean....

Summer whites

Our tropical spring is very short and so very soon the air became warm and then all at once rather very hot. As a blessing, the heat allowed the blossoming of the summer whites, as I love to call them, the jasmine varieties…. This year they were in full bloom very early with the onset of heat, even before the real summer set in. So against the fresh, lovely, soothing, new green leaves, the white looked stark and amazing. The jasmines and jasmine like lilies seemed to compete in their displays. The lily buds

were hidden inside the bunch and came out one after the other and filled to form a beautiful bouquet. The jasmine tree blossomed heavily and the night air was filled with its fragrance. It was so alluring, we brought it inside the home, it kept on blooming for days even inside. And its enchanting fragrance truly filled the entire room overnight, as if the open rooms were sprayed with a jasmine aroma. How powerful these tiny flowers are! Not all trees flowered, but the flowers that came, came quickly and filled the plant. And at similar times also came the burst of the white bougainvilleas. And so I thought of aligning them all for a perfect green and white summer colour scheme. Hope you enjoy…..

A day's flower and its unique message....

This looks like an orchid group flower, that flowered for the first time in our garden, this late spring. They were all bright yellow and open, featherweight and looked were here to stay like the orchids. But as the day passed from morning to noon, I saw that the flowers were curling up, I was surprized, and felt may be something was wrong. 

I had brought them indoors as they looked so bright. Then, I noticed they curled up more by the day, and  by night they twisted and more and saw that a specific measured closure was taking place with time. By next day each curled more and tightened more and more, the colour changed brown and were ready to fall off, and soon fell off, as a tight dark brown tiny piece. I literally needed to follow each one to confirm that it was a definite cycle that was occuring with time, when they started to bud and bloom again grow to the full flower then curl up and die over the next day, and the next and so on and so forth.  It was like an amazing movie I was watching.  Wow, then I realized these were those unique one day flowers. And I was watching an an entire cycle of differentiation, growth and cell death in real time! 

Yes, we know this earth can be dry and barren without water, and plants wither away in the heat and then flourish under rain as the water cycle tells us. But look at this, by morning another set of buds came up, swelled like balloons and blossomed into a full flower, by the day, curling up by the evening, tightening by night and fall off by morning. May be just because the flowers give such an aesthetic sense of beauty and touch our feelings, a sense of losing them overnight, was not an easy thing. It gave a thought of loss and separation, and literally was walking me through the cycle of life. Although seasonal flowers come and go, they too appeal, but this one day flower, gave a feeling of experiencing death and then life at the same time, seeing buds come up and budding into new flowers was like a new creation overnight after the end of one cycle. So imagine, how thought provoking these small flowers, turned out to be. I was speechless and simply gazed at them and kept on following them through. 

Flowers are the reproductive organs and are required for the plant survival through the seed that grow to new plants, for those of them who depend on propagation through fertilization as this one seemed to be, this is the job of the flowers, others can propagate by bulbs. Flowers come and go, and attract both us and pollinators to enhance pollination, by self or cross germination,  they propagate seeds while the fruits come as a by product, to protect the seeds, yet help us in nutrition. This is in all theory and practice correct, right?

Yet, seeing the flowers fall off reminded me of the death pathway of apoptosis, which in Greek means to fall off, like leaves falling off a tree.  It was something one could see clearly see here, as the end product of the dead curled dry flower literally fell off in the morning, such was this its unique one day flowers. It stirred my mind so much, my gaze took me deep inside the cell and also outside into the greater sense of creation all around us. 

How genetically different the cycle of life can be for different life forms around us. It took me back to the pages of my Cell Biology book, once again. How active could it's survival, differentiation and death pathways be and How many more genes were active for these pathways to be working at the same time and so fast? I was struck in awe, kept following the plant for a new cycle each day for the whole next week and kept thinking and thinking….may be inside these tiny flowers it was like a factory filled with machineries working day in day out, to activate the survival-differentiation-death machinery one by one or may be at the same time, we would need to evaluate......

They became

brown like the barren earth after the vegetation withers.Then, they fell off the green plant as the new budding already started with perfect timing, as if a manager was managing the whole affair, very accurately switching on and off those required genes for life again. Amazing are wonders of Creation!! 

Although it was only a tiny flower, yet it send its messages clear, of the cycle of life, its motion in time, life and death, all worked in one sequence of creation and recreation for a well-balanced measured time. For this flower it was just this one day, went like the blink of an eye. Somehow this one day cycle gave a sudden reminder of this unique motion of life, also of time and space, that keeps changing from one form to the other. More curiously, such changing with time could be applied to the larger macro-cosmos too, the creation of the universe and its re-creation with changing time and space. Such are the dynamics, set on the strange mysterious clock by which both macro and micro cosmoses work, by the will of the Mighty Supreme. We remain in awe, and keep wondering and thinking way beyond our normal imaginations.....

I hope the sequences have been self-explanatory and you have enjoyed the story that the one day flower left behind......

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