Blur the Heat.

Two weeks back I was laying on a poolside lounger and ordering mojitos – watermelon mojitos. I didn’t want to come back. I mean, not leave the pool side and go back to the hotel room. One of those was enough to make me silly. I am a cheap drunk, real cheap – I’m talking by the third sip I feel my veins tingling kind of cheap. I never used to be this way until I stopped drinking during pregnancy. You would never know I had a drink but I don’t think I make much sense in ‘that’ state.

So once back from vacation I got hold of the recipe for these lovely watermelon mojitos from my cousin in North Dakota. The drink doesn’t call for much and with the abundance of mint in my mother-in-law’s garden I just had to give it a go. Perfect drink to share on the blog, I thought. So I decide to bring Saira to her grandparents’ for a play date while I try my hand photographing the drinks.

Two drinks were made. Potent and immensely gorgeous looking. The sun was out pounding on me on the back patio where I had the drinks laid on the table for pictures. The sweltering heat didn’t help a slow-mo photographer like me. A few clicks and disappearing ice cubes later I just said, to heck with it, whatever I got I’ll work with it. Then I sat down and drank the first glass, pretty quickly. It was very hot you see. I looked at the next drink and thought I need to drink that fast before the ice cubes melt. So there it went. The summer heat felt pretty good by then.

I looked over at my neighbour’s garden, picked up my camera (50mm manual lens attached) and went to see her. I’m sure I asked her if I could take some pictures of her beautiful flowers. Not sure how long I spent talking to her and what I talked about but I do remember telling her before I left how gorgeous my shots have been and that I would make her a few prints of her flowers. When I came home I realized I have a child waiting to be picked up from the grandparents’. It had been a while since the drinks so I called the husband (glad I remembered him) and asked him to pick the little one up on his way home.

Later that evening I downloaded about 24 blurry shots of the same hollyhocks, 17 blurry shots of clematis, grass, solar garden lights, 7 blurry hydrangeas, 2 blurry shots of something I can’t recognize…. in all I had 237 out of focus photographs of her gorgeous garden and one perfect shot of their brick wall. Must have been this terrible summer heat.

My neighbour is waiting for some fantastic prints of her flowers.

WATERMELON MOJITO

This is exactly what my cousin wrote down for me:

2 ounces white rum (cuban if you can get it), juice from 1 lime, few cubes of watermelon (roughly crushed), a few mint leaves chopped up for flavor and a few sprigs for garnish, 2-3 tsps of sugar, 3 ounces or so of ginger ale. Mix all with crushed ice or on the rocks. Enjoy!

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