Anyway, moments later I noticed that my net connection was down. The lightning must have hit whatever it was I needed to be able to go online. Till the next day I was blaming my ISP for this tragedy that had befallen me.. then I got to talk to a DSL repair technician over the phone.
"May ilaw ho ba ang router niyo?" was his query. I checked. No lights on the little rectangles that were normally red. So the culprit was the router, and I had to have it repaired or else purchase a new one.
So here I am, feeling somewhat nostalgic about carrying on my pre-wifi routine of working on my computer beside the telephone and modem. If I wanted to go online, I'd walk over to this desk. If it was time for bed, no bringing the laptop with me to catch a few minutes of whatever I fancied on YouTube. I had the same view in front of me, to my left and to my right whenever I worked online at home.
This is what I see in front of me each time I have to use the internet at home:
Cute huh? Brown wall embellished by dainty bird cages, with vines climbing around them, giving the cages and the winged creatures a kind of "let nature take its course" charm. Only, there's nothing natural about it since they're mere stickers, meant to beautify an otherwise plain surface. They really are lovely and make a wonderful substitute for framed photos or paintings.
But then step out of the front door and you'll be greeted by the real thing. We don't have bird cages, but birds do have a habit of whizzing by often -- probably due to the luxuriant foliage in some parts of the garden. Many times when we can't see them through the living room window, we simply enjoy their endless chirping. It's amazing to live in the city -- and a polluted one at that -- and realize that birds still thrive in this environment.
Yesterday morning I was inspecting the lantana and a las cuatro beauties outside the front door, as I have grown accustomed to doing each morning; I even took a few shots -- for what, I didn't really know. I used to do that a lot when I was still on Facebook, then I'd share one or two photos if they turned out okay. Now that I had taken a break from it, I seemed to take shots with my phone with less enthusiasm though the practice, obviously, wasn't eliminated altogether.
Here's one I like because it shows the lantana with a slightly different color scheme. It's the first time I'm seeing the blooms with red-orange instead of fuschia:
It's amazing how you can feast your eyes on the same area of blooms day after day for months and see the same things, and yet one day you'll be surprised by something new.
However, as I checked out the colorful blossoms, little did I know that I was in for yet another surprise, a surprise that would allow me to see another wonder of nature up close -- well, not really up close, but the closest so far that I had gotten to seeing a tiny creature doing what it's supposed to do in any garden.
Neat huh? Too bad my phone's zoom feature acted up and wouldn't work, so this was the closest shot I could get. Seconds later, the butterfly flew away.
But what do you know -- 24 hours later it was back, hovering over the little flowers again! I think it was the same creature as the black and white prints on its wings looked the same. What do you think?
As I later studied the photos I took, I noticed another winged creature in the background that just happened to fly by as I took this shot. Great timing for the little one to be passing by over our hedges!
One thing's for sure -- the dainty bird cages and vines decorating our wall sure are pretty, but nothing can beat the real thing in any garden.
P.S. This has more photos of other flowers found in our garden, along with interesting quotes and proverbs about flowers.
No comments:
Post a Comment