the pieces are assembling, but the show hasn't started. alex wong and i went went down there this afternoon. i had promised him fabulous blossoming trees and a plethora of photo opportunities, but the landscape was relatively sparse and the temperature wasn't as warm as i thought. 
it was a busy day, or as busy as a cemetery can be, since visiting a place where the dead are buried might not be for everyone. in the ponds, some turtles, some fish (red carps), tadpoles, and boatmen. red wing blackbirds and grackles flock around the edges of the ponds, and i had my loud cough to scare away most of the other birds. 
we were alerted by a birding couple of a nesting pair of red tail hawks and drove to see them, the area already crowded by two bird enthusiasts with the most enviable digital photography equipment i'd ever seen, telescopic lenses the size and length of traffic cones, stalking the hawks like some nature paparazzi. one of the hawks flew out of the tree into a good vantage point. the two men followed with their cameras clicking and afterwards one of them asked if i had "gotten the shot" with my relatively small camera setup. "yes," i murmured.
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we climbed the tower, crowded with tourists. a man wearing aviator sunglasses and holding a cup of coffee sat on the top, speaking loudly, telling people he knew more about boston than anyone else here, reciting facts, mostly about watertown. he was annoying, my passive aggressive self thought about pushing him over to his death. i took some photos at 32x magnification, from a single view i could see harvard university, the galleria mall, the museum of science, and logan airport.
 cardinal |
 nuthatch |
 downy woodpecker |
 red wing blackbird |
we came back to my place around 4pm. alex was in no mood for wings, revealing that the past few times fire was coming out from his posterior (that's what you get when you feast on suicide wings and "lie" and tell me they're not hot). instead, he ordered some peking raviolis from zoe's, while i toaster ovened some hot wings of my own. after alex left around 6pm, my father came to pick me up to go to belmont for dinner with my parents, my aunt and uncle, and my godfather. first thing i did when i got back was to take a tour of the backyard. there wasn't very much to see.
 crocuses |
 daffodils |
 ground cover |
we ate dinner with the red sox game playing on the television in the background. 
after dinner, slices of orange and this strange tea that comes in a ball and opens up to reveal a flower that then floats to the top of the tea (the tea itself isn't very exceptional). i got a ride back to my place where i started making the flan for tomorrow night's dinner. i used real vanilla bean this time, scraping out the paste and letting it simmer in three cups of heated milk.
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