The "Great Blue Orb of Tranquility"!

  Call me crazy if you like, (most folks do) but I have a great interest in the "unexplained".  I like weird and wonderful things!  If something occurs that is a tad unusual, I want to explore why it happened in the first place.  Son says that I just can't leave well enough alone but, then again, he readily has an answer for all of my questions.  (I love having kids that are smarter than me and, well, all of mine are!)  Anyway, if I come across a bit of quirkiness in nature or if I do something that has strange results, I am thrilled.  A lot of these oddities happen with my poor attempt at photography.  A lot of happy results are nothing more than huge mistakes!  

  My latest "happy" happened when I was trying to photograph an extraordinarily bright sunset the other evening.  There was hardly a cloud to be found and the sun was most gleaming!  I have no idea why this appealed to me so since I seem to be drawn more to the more colorful sunsets.  Give me a western sky filled with reds and oranges and I am one happy camper!  Still, this captivated me!  Out came the camera and I started snapping pictures.  Once inside, I viewed my efforts in capturing the beauty that had been set before me.  While the photographs fell into the "ok" category, one blip in the pictures intrigued me.  I had captured an ORB!!! Whoopee!  An orb!  Now don't get me wrong. I do understand that orbs can be just reflections but this one seemed different somehow.  This orb was brilliant blue AND had the upside-down scene of the yon tree in it! Well, now!  That was different!  If only there was a way to enlarge the "orb" so I could view it even better!  I am sad to say that my skills at computers is even more lacking than my skills in photography.  I could not enlarge the orb to the size that I wished.

  This is where my son, Michael, came into the whole scenario. "Obviously, you managed to photograph a dust mote, a bit of moisture or even a fleck of pollen that reflected an inverse image of the tree behind you and not the one between you and the sun."  Huh?  "Check out the picture in the "orb". It is upside-down alright but it is not the same tree as the one in the photograph and most orbs are just bits of something floating in the air and not a true orb." Well, that just sounded far too logical to be anything that I wanted to hear so I decided that a bit of imagination sounded far more fun!  Nope!  This is not a dust speck!  I refuse to believe that!  It is a mystical orb floating about the marsh and I read somewhere that blue orbs are special! They usually are signs of peace and calm but this was no ordinary orb!   This, my friends, was The Great Blue Orb of Tranquility and it reigned over the Bayou and all of its denizens!  The Orb was there to mediate all squabbles between the herons and egrets.  It was there to soothe the feelings of the otters when the nutria rats are feeling quite territorial. It was there to mediate between the pelicans and gulls. It was there to bring peace to all.  The Orb needed my help, though, as the trees were harboring ill-will...specifically the tree it was depicting. Since trees do not respond well to the efforts of the Orbs, it was my job to placate the feelings of that particular tree and ease its worry.  I had to find a way to mollify the anger of the Tree!  When I confronted the Tree, it told me that it was angry at the Smilax vines.  The evil vines were using the tree as support but were strangling it.  The Tree would soon die if they did not let go.  Aha!  That was most easy to fix! I told the tree that I fully understood its predicament and that I was there to reason with the Smilax.  All would be well with the tree and peace would once again be found on the Bayou!  The Great Blue Orb thanked me profusely and declared that I was official Smilax Soother! 

  Ok, ok, so none of this is true but you have to admit that my story was a lot more imaginative than the logical response that I received about my orb!  The only purpose that the story served, though, was to remind me that I really need to get down there and chop out some more of those pesky vines!  I do think it is far more fun to photograph blue orbs!