Where has a week gone? Blooms ~ lots of pictures

Good morning Folks,

Well, it’s Monday morning here in s.e. FL.  I hope you all had a great weekend. I planted some seeds yesterday, repotted a rose and moved it into the main garden. Last week I worked in the secret garden and in the main gardens, and it felt great working in them. I even got a scrape and bruise down my right shin bone, front of leg when a piece of decorative cement fell over and scraped down the leg. OUCH!  At least I had my long jeans on, but it sure hurt like crazy. It’s much better today. I’m going to try to stress less this year, go with the flow, and not be too envious of all the beautiful gardens I see on the internet. I’ve more seeds to plant, and cuttings to take, that I hope will root.

Oh yea, yesterday while out in the main garden taking pictures, I looked at a vine I’ve been watching as I noticed it had buds on it.  I thought it was going to have purple morning glory type blooms, but instead these are tiny little that smell like honeysuckle, at least that was my interpretation of the scent.  What a pleasant surprise as I love sweet scents in the garden.  I’ll show some pictures in the next post in hopes that someone in garden land will be able to identify it.

These pictures were taken over the last 3-4 days.

Four o’clocks.

Dainty Bess

Louis Philippe

Love ~ The first two pics were without the sun hitting the bloom. I then walked away, and a little bit later turned around and the sunlight hitting the bloom made me take another couple of pics.

Plumbago

Blue Sage

Spiderwort

Phyllis bide from bud to open bloom.

Kathleen

La Marne

Louis Philippe

Mm. Laurette Messimy

It’s time to fix us some breakfast.

Hope you all have a great week.

FlowerLady

Blue Sage - Eranthemum

Good morning everyone. It is a chilly 41 and with the wind chill feels like it's 35. That would seem warm to a lot of you, to us it's cold. I hope you are all staying comfy and warm.

This mornings post is about a wonderfully blue flowered shrub, called Blue Sage. I got this many, many years ago at our local flea market. It is one of my very favorite shrubs in our gardens.

I have a great book from 1969 that we bought at this same flea market in 1991. It is Florida Landscape Plants ~ Native and Exotic by John V. Watkins and Thomas J. Sheehan. It is a University of Florida book.

The following info is from this book.

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Eranthemum (er-ANN-the-mum): Greek for lovely flower

Family: Acanthaceae.

Relatives: Bears-breech and shrimp plant.

Habit of Growth: Strongly upright, open, and scraggly.

Flowers: Celestial blue, 3/4" across, in axillary and terminal spikes, above prominently nerved bracts.

Partial shade is recommended and sandy soil of moderate fertility, that drains readily, is usually satisfactory.

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We definitely have sandy soil here, and this plant survives around the property with little care. I love it and look forward to those wonderful blue flowers every winter. The plant can be rather scraggly, but you can prune it if you wish. Mine are usually scraggly.

For more information visit Top Tropicals. I see at this website that they have a purple flowering one, oh my. I've never even seen the purple around here at all.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL