Pictures? Why not?

My orchid just finished blooming for the first time in 2 years. I wish it would bloom more regularly, but then it probably wishes it were fertilized once in a while.

Sometime a couple years back I searched in vain for pictures of Royal Poinciana trees. They grow all over Miami and bloom beautifully, but this is the first time in a long while that I got home during the blooming season. This one's on the University of Miami campus. To get the idea of full bloom, image the orange-red blooms covering the whole canopy like a blanket.

Also on campus, ibises! Which makes sense--the school's mascot is an ibis. Quoth the UM website: "Folklore maintains that the Ibis, a symbol of knowledge found in the Everglades and Egypt, is the last sign of wildlife to take shelter before a hurricane and the first to reappear after the storm."

One more...The hippest looking beer I know is Brother Thelonious Belgian Abbey Ale. The better half just ran across a web reference to it (on Cafe Aman), so at the local liquor emporium we picked up a bottle. Proceeds go to the T. Monk Insitute of Jazz. Drink and support music education? Alright, I will!

On this day (musically)

Into the world: Praetorius, William Henry Fry, Glazunov, Leo Fender, Giya Kancheli, Ronnie Spector, Ian Anderson, yours truly (in a year ending with a 7), and -- apparently -- The Standing Room. Happy birthday, TSR!
     non-musical bonus: the Smithsonian Institution, Angie Harmon

Out of the world: Michael Haydn, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Conlon Nancarrow (10 years ago).
     non-musical bonus: the city of Nineveh, Rin Tin Tin

Other: oddly enough, on the same date 481 years apart, Magellan leaves port in Seville to circumnavigate the globe (1509), and the NASA space probe named for him lands on Venus to begin imaging its surface. Cool.

Thanks to wikipedia & Composers Datebook for the mix of interesting and worthless information.