Pink Lady, With Two Ladies in Waiting

Last week when I was at the Arboretum, I discovered a bright pink delight: the night-blooming water lilies. I posted a photo of four of them in full bloom as Friday's blip. They only look that way first thing in the morning; as the day goes on, the blooms close up and that full and saturated shade of pink seems to abate.

During Tuesday's visit, a few of the blooms were open, and additional blooms - closed up - were lying down in the water. I guess I'm not too sure if these were blooms that were coming, or blooms that were going. But I like to think of them as coming blooms, or "ladies in waiting."

You can see on the right that there are a few additional blooms just outside the frame of this shot. I'd have cropped them out to neaten things up a bit and ensure the focus on that one full pink bloom lower right, but I couldn't bear to lose any of the full bloom's petals. So I left them in.