What blooms at night

Some of the best flowers out here are on a timer nobody set for our convenience. They open well after dark, they are white because white is what a moth can find, and they are finished by the time the sun is properly up.

You get one night. There is no second showing and no way to move it. The only way to see one is to be paying enough attention in the days beforehand to notice the bud swelling, and then to actually go outside at eleven at night because of it.

Most years I miss it. The year I did not, I stood in the dark for forty minutes with a torch and got one photograph, and it was worth the other four years.