Category Archives: Flowers

Outside of my bathroom window is a hibiscus plant which I’ve shared before. One morning recently I found that one of the large, flaming red hibiscus flowers had turned away from the sun and was pressed up against the glass. With the sun streaming directly in through the window (as you migh surmise, I am NOT an early riser) the intensity of the red flower and green leaves, broken up by the thousands of tiny prisms in the bathroom window glass, was almost overwhelming.

It was incredible how rich the colors were. I had to delay my shower while I grabbed my phone to take pictures.

A) This behavior should not surprise anyone who’s known me for more than thirty seconds.

B) No, I was not high on any artificial substances, legal or otherwise. It was just life, maaaaaaan…

Seriously – pay attention to the really bright colors out there, the hues that are screaming at you to be noticed.

And maybe clean the bathroom windows just a little bit more often. (Duly noted!)

What a long day! What a busy weekend, and not necessarily in a good way! So what have I got for you?

That’s right! More lousy roses! (It’s right there in the title!)

I thought that I still had some photos on my phone that I hadn’t used yet. And I was right! (Blow this one up and look at the vein structure detail in those petals!)

These are gorgeous (and I’m particularly fond of gorgeous) and I enjoy sharing them.

The more I look at houses in the high desert (either Lancaster/Palmdale or Hesperia/Apple Valley) and how they have really nice houses plopped down into an acre of slightly graded dirt with no lawn, no landscaping, no NOTHING, the more I know that if we end up getting one of those places, I’m going to harken back to my English heritage (a LOT of generations ago, like, going back to 1664) and start building little gardens to putter around in.

Putter, putter, putter…

Amongst the roses next to the driveway…

They’re fantastic! Obviously.

I see in looking at images online that they come in a multitude of colors. We just have pink.

Which makes me wonder why we just have the one. Why not more?

We have 18 or 20 rose bushes along the driveway in two rows, with this gladiolus in between the rows at some random spot.

Why not have a whole row of multi-colored gladiolus in between the rows of roses?

Not my circus, not my monkeys! I just rent. But when we get our own house…

Commonly known as Mexican Feather Grass.

It’s drought resistant, “desert landscaping,” so you see a lot of it around, including in our back yard.

The rabbits love it, they’re always shredding the ends and chewing it down. It’s unusual to see it this long, especially given the number of bunnies seen every night in the yard.

Proof that a plant doesn’t need to have spectacular flowers to thrive.

Nothing flashy, but lots of very subtle shades of green, orange, and brown.

As well as some very nice textures and shapes to ponder. Here it’s chaotic…

…and here it’s structured, an inverted pyramid. Is there some treasure buried down there at the bottom?

I can see the attraction.

They’re lovely.

I’m sure they would be Barbie’s favorites as well!

And there are a lot of them blooming.

A little bit of variety, a couple have just the tiniest bit of yellow shading as well.

This one’s late to the party, but it will be the last one standing.

Happy Birthday!

At the little restaurant where we get Sunday breakfast, there are a couple dozen eucalyptus trees in the parking lot.

Yesterday I found the entire parking lot littered with thin strips and patches of eucalyptus bark as the whole grove had decided to shed together almost overnight.

Eucalyptus are non-native to SoCal, but they grow well here and they’re everywhere. As invasive species go, they’re not terrible.

The fact that they anually shed their bark is a bit of a nuisance since the stuff gets everywhere and is a mess to clean up.

The bigger problem is that, either on the ground like this or still clinging to the trunk of the tree, this thin, paper-like bark is highly flammable. When a brush fire starts, these things go up like Roman candles.

What I was REALLY looking for as I got back to the car was the red tailed hawk that was making quite the racket somewhere in the treetops thirty feet above me. I never saw him, but the food chain is obvious. There’s a grocery store here, several restaurants, large trash bins spilling over with food, and all of that attracts seagulls. Fat, slow, well fed seagulls keep red tailed hawks well fed.

The laws of unintended consequences, urban shopping mall version!

I talked last week about how much I adore this precise color.

Now there’s a new bloom on the same plant, and today it was sublime!

It smelled like…indictments!

The Seek app won’t ID the species, just says it’s part of the onion family.

I’m not big on purple flowers, probably because of all of the jacaranda trees around. The leaves they drop onto the sidewalk are extremely slippery and a real hazard when I’m running or even walking.

These haven’t attacked me … yet. (Tomorrow’s another day, filled with opportunities!)

As noted yesterday, the Chaos Times are upon me. (Also, many thanks to @wcroth55 for the spot on comment with the Kipling quote!)

So you may consider this a tiny, friendly heads up that you may just be getting random photos with minimal verbage or prose for the next couple of weeks. Think of them as my personal version of “proof of live” messages.

While dealing with yesterday’s plumbing issues I was down under this hibiscus (there’s a cleanout buried under there) and there were no flowers on it at all. I would have noticed! Today, a handful of full blooms with more getting ready to pop.

For my effort in getting these pictures I almost got a hummingbird in the ear. Apparently they’ve already laid claim to them and the fact that I was standing there upset them. They didn’t recognize me as the one who feeds them in the back yard. Not surprising – they’re incredible flyers, but that’s despite the fact that their brains are thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis 🤏🏻 small (at best).

As I’ve no doubt commented before, while beautiful, these things remind me of Triffids, and that book (and movie) made it tough to sleep for a few nights, so having them right outside the house isn’t necessarily comforting.

Another day survived. Pressing on. I hope y’all are doing well also!