Flowers Galore II

Posted on by capentalc

Last time I shared pictures of flowers in my garden. This next set of pictures are some more of my favorite flowers blooming currently. These are blooms that have been shocking and surprising all these past couple of weeks.

The time and effort in nurturing these plants have been extremely satisfying for me, especially when they surprised me out of nowhere and bloomed. The hibiscus below was such an example. I grew it from seeds last year, planted in the ground this March and now it has grown about 3 feet tall. A few weeks ago I saw some buds but it stayed small that way for a while. I was worried pests would damage the buds. I lost the labels for this hibiscus so I had no idea what color it was going to be. A few days ago I saw it bloomed for the first time in the evening and my first thought was “ooohh, what a cutie!” At the time, it was around 7 p.m., it was closing its petals for the night. I was super excited. The next day I got out early enough to capture the other picture, it was another bud opening, the other one closed for good. See for yourself…

Other surprising blooms this week are these hibiscus flowers. Never have I seen this many flowers all at once, so I was pleasantly surprised. The most spectacular thing about this hibiscus is in the morning it is a dark bright pink (first picture below – from another day) and at the end of the afternoon, it turns into a beautiful salmon pink color. LOVE this plant!

Here are a few more of my favorite hibiscuses. I should probably relabeled this post as HIBISCUS since there are so many. I did say in the beginning of my blog posts that hibiscuses are in my top five of flowers!

The next wonderful surprise happening this past week was this red hibiscus that I have waited two years for it to fully bloom. Every year in the past there would be a few buds but they always fall to the ground before any of them bloomed. This is the first time I actually got to see a full flower and I am so giddy with happiness when I saw it. There are a few more buds on the tree getting ready to bloom and so far it is only giving me one every few days!

Here are a few of my other delightful finds this week or the week before and the week before that. The below are blushing susie vines and a bougainvillea.

Next, are lovely bunches of hydrangea flowers in four stages of life. This one is very pretty because it starts out peachy pink and gradually over several days changes colors to a nice light lavender. These past weeks they bloomed more than they ever have. But then, this has been in the ground for only a year. I expect next year is going to get even better.

This year one of my plumerias bloomed the best in all the 19 years that I have seen it. It has varying shades of pinks, yellows, and whites. I have only seen it as a boring pink all these years but this year has been spectacular and it is taller than the roof of my house! I didn’t know plumerias can get that tall but this guy does.

Heretofore, if you made it all the way down here, I will leave you with one of my newest favorite…the gerbera daisy! I love the bright pink in this flower. Makes me happy just to look at it!

Flowers Galore

Posted on by capentalc

Today, I wanted to share some lovely flowers from my garden. There are a variety of clematis, bachelor’s buttons, opus asters, California bluebells, paper daisy, four o’clocks, and chicory in this collection. Most were grown from seeds. I hope to show you a second part of the “Flowers Galore” next week.

Clematis

The above picture consisted of paper daisy, some other daisy ( I cannot think of the name of this type of daisy) but I believe it has the word “golden” in it, and the last is the opus aster.

I wish I can remember the name of this one above because I want to have more of these cuties. It was not from seeds. This bloomed for one day and closed up to a pretty peach flowers at the end as you can see here.

Sweet Williams flowers – I love the deep purple of this flower bunch.

The above are pictures of four o’clocks, dahlias, and a rose mallow.

Chicory flowers – beautiful bunches of lavender blue blooms.
California Bluebells
Blue Bachelor’s Buttons

Also, the latest update on my gingkaku melon that I talked about several weeks ago. It has ripened and have gotten bigger. I think I will cut them open sometimes next week. The yellow one looks slightly smaller than the ones I have gotten from the Asian grocery stores. It did have such a sweet, ripened fruit fragrance though so maybe I will cut them tomorrow.

Hollyhocks

Posted on by capentalc

One of the many wonderful surprises in my yard this spring are hollyhocks. I planted several hollyhocks from seeds last spring but I didn’t see any flowers until this year! I love the tall flowery stems that sprouted. I planted a mix of hollyhock seeds but the colors that bloomed this year are BLACK (how cool is that!!!!????), pink, and red. I am very partial to black flowers. All are my favorites so far.

I tell you, these guys are not easy to keep them looking great all the time. The leaves were riddled with rust, curls, mildew, and all kinds of ugliness as you can see from the pictures. I try not to look at the leaves when I go out there to visit them. I was constantly trimming the infested leaves off of the plant, that was not enjoyable.

Despite the difficulty maintaining hollyhocks, I think it is worthwhile to grow a few more of them. I think they would look great grown in groups. I did manage to save the flower seeds for next year’s planting. Hopefully the current plants will be more abundant in their third year.

Love the light pinks and yellows mixed in these flowers.
See the leaves curl and rust that is common on these plants.