Crinum Lily's second season

I was delighted to hear my wife shout out recently (July 15) to tell me that her Crinum Lily (Crinum Ellen Bosanquet) was in full bloom again.

    The flower's first blooming is shown in photos I took last July.

The parable of "I don't know"

Cancun Sunrise (July 6, 2011)

A friend of fifty-five years recently told me a little parable:

One day a prehistoric dad was asked by his son or daughter, "Why does the sun come up every day?"
    Did the dad frankly say, "I don't know"? I don't think so. Same as now, dads want to come off as knowing the answers.
    So, the prehistoric dad says: "God makes it come up."

    The parable explains, if not the meaning of God, at least the meaning of God-as-explanation. "God" is how some people avoid admitting that they don't know.

My friend, who was more fortunate than I in the religion department, added that:

God was never an issue in my life. I was not indoctrinated in any religious belief. Little of what I heard about God made any sense to me so I came to the conclusion early on that God is a figment of man's imagination. Without any encumbrance of indoctrination to overcome, and desiring to know things, I naturally gravitated toward science.

My daughter was similarly fortunate (or precocious). She has told me that she realized "as a kid" that God didn't exist.
    At least my own childhood exposure to religion didn't lead me to indoctrinate my children. My wife and I did, however, take them to church (an Episcopal mission in San Jose, California) and have them "confirmed." (And I even prevailed on a couple of friends to be named as their godfathers—one of them a recent convert to Judaism. Neither of them seems to have done either of our children any harm.)

So, let's enjoy the blossoming of my wife's Crinum Lily. I took about twenty-five photographs between 9:43 a.m. on June 30 and 7:30 this morning, when the sun, for whatever reason, was coming up:

June 30, 9:43 a.m.

July 1, 8:48 p.m.

July 2,  8:08 a.m.

July 2,  11:53 a.m.

July 2, 1:00 p.m.

July 2, 4:54 p.m. (1)

July 2, 4:54 p.m. (2)

July 2, 4:54 p.m. (3)

July 2, 7:02 p.m.

July 2,  7:03 p.m.

July 3,  7:31 a.m.

Again, from a bit to the right:

June 30, 9:43 a.m.

July 1, 8:41 p.m.

July 2, 8:08 a.m.

July 2, 8:09 a.m.

July 2, 9:28 a.m.

July 2, 11:53 a.m.

July 2, 1:00 p.m.

July 2, 4:55 p.m.

July 3, 7:30 a.m.