Flowers

The bougainvilleas on the west side of our property are in bloom. They have become one of my favorite flowers here in the Valley. There are three different shades of rose/fushia/pink here. The queen palms in the back ground are the north boundary and the fence in the mid-distance surrounds the tennis courts just behind us.

A close up of the bougainvilleas

This is a climbing rose named pinata, given to me by my friend Theresa.

I hope it will grow over the metal archway between the driveway and the back patio area. I had an enormous yellow mandevilla vine that died in the cold weather we had this winter. The rose has yellow buds, opening to an orange flower that turns to a deep coral red. When the plant has all three colors going at one time it's very striking. Theresa insists it will survive here with limited sun light and a clay bed that seems mighty muddy to me. I hope she's right.

This is my one remaining hibiscus.

 The other two died when I dug them up in order to save them.

It is an ugly story and one I choose not to share.

The area around my front porch has an asparagus fern I moved from the back of the lot, the Crown of Thorns once planted in a bed in front and a variety of aloe vera in the tall plant in back. The aloe had a tall stem growing from the middle of the plant with a cluster of orange blooms at the top, but did I get a photo? Nooooooo.

Another asparagus fern recently relocated from the back next to a yucca that also made the move.

Vikki left the geranium when she headed to places north.

The succulent to the right with the flat paddle shaped leaves is a type of kalanchoe.

The baby Crown of Thorns has since moved in to the cat planter because the Mexican heather shown there in this photo became too moody for its own good,

This used to be filled with rock and was home to the Crown of Thorns. 

I simply cannot tell you the amount of work it took to get the rocks out of the two beds in the front of the house. Of course I did it last fall when temperatures were in the high 90s, and I was too stubborn to admit I'd made a mistake in starting the job. I could have paid a couple of workers to do it in a day but instead worked on the job for 2 weeks. 

But the croton  looks great there, right?!!!!

This simple little white flower doesn't look impressive but,

covering a citrus tree it has a huge impact in fragrance.

The smell is indescribable.

It is so heady,

euphoric,

intoxicating.....

It is sublime!

The perfume only lasts a few weeks but ohhhhhhhh..

If the honeysuckle and lilac knew they would hang their heads in shame.

What's THAT!!!

At a flea market last month Vikki and I came upon a fruit we'd never seen before.

The thing was HUGE.........

and warty...........

Here it sits in front of pineapples and snuggled between mangoes and papayas.

We figured it must have come from farther south in Mexico

or maybe Central America

or even South America

The vendor had a limited use of English but eventually understood that we wanted to know what the name of the fruit was. 

It's jack fruit, and sliced in rounds you can see the edible yellow-orange pulp.

The taste was not particularly pleasant; very sweet and pithy.

Still intrigued with the exotic fruit we struggled through the language barrier to learn where it came from.

From farther south, just as we thought.

Australia!

Yes, Australia!

Just about that time the woman's husband asked for $2 for the photo and our geography lesson ended.

I have since investigated jack fruit and found they are related to the osage orange, or what we in Missouri call hedge apples.

We bought the mangoes and had fresh mango daiquiris.

The daiquiris were also too sweet but we powered through them.