Yesterday I found a small tree with a good rootball, discarded beside a dumpster in Vancouver's West End. I've potted the tree and I'd like to know what it is. The leaves are decidedly opposite. My habit photos here are particularly bad, and complicated by there being bamboo stems just behind the new tree's stems. Does anyone know what we have here? Thanks.
Yes! Yes! Yes! And I am very happy, as I LOVE mock oranges! I couldn't have asked for a more superb find! I'm so glad I brought it home. Thanks a lot, saltcedar, as always. That was very good news. (The photo in the link was taken really nicely, wasn't it?)
Wish some posters (not you) could understand the value of a clear and correctly staged image with a solid contrasting background.
I'm quite horrified by my lack of ability with digital. Every so often I try to learn proper, non-auto settings. My best results have been with video, but, even there, I haven't learned the editing skills. I'm as poor with photo-tech as I am with learning Spanish. In my 20s, I took beautiful SLR photos, using KII 25 ASA film and, for wildflowers, often slave flash techniques. These photos were used in my evening slide talks for Parks Canada, when I was a naturalist in the Canadian Rockies. I even taught photo seminars, 35 years ago. But the world changed, cameras changed, and I changed. I still have my innate love to rise to the occasion, but I'm pretty slow at delivery. I'm fine with computers; I put this one together. But my photography remains "for tomorrow". However, next time I take a complex twigs-and-branches photo, I'll see if I can do it with a nicely contrasting, solid background. At 67, I'd better get some results; I'm two-thirds of the way to a hundred, and my next 35 years are not for slacking off. —I'm deciding at present on yes/no for a planned 3-month Costa Rica visit this autumn; it would be my eighth. I go there with no real money; my air fare is my biggest purchase. I have really really good Tico friends, and I do as well as I can at, this time, 67-going-on-18. No security; lots of risks; a few dangers. Best people I've ever known. A bunch of birds and a zillion plants. I don't know the plant ecology, nor the plant names, nor the plant communities. I plunge myself into my own ignorance and a lot of fears, and most of the time I love it. This is not the tourists' Costa Rica. A good bed, electricity, and hot water are luxuries; sometimes I'm that fortunate. Emotional highs and lows are like a yo-yo. And, through all of it, the zen is as fantastic as the flowers and the birds.
