A few more reasons...

To Love the South

Yesterday, I spent most of the day working in the yard. Mowing, trimming, etc. While riding the mower, I noticed that the gardenia bush was blooming. The fragrance is one I look forward to every year about this time. When I got closer to it, I noticed that some of the blooms were still opening. That means I'll get to smell it for at least another week or 2.
This is what the blooms look like:

The white blooms and shiny green leaves make beautiful arrangements and you can smell them all over the house.

After I started paying attention to everything that was blooming around here, I decided to grab the camera when I got through mowing and try my hand at a few "nature shots".

The oleanders are some of the prettiest flowers to be so "simple". I've seen them blooming white and other colors but this color is my favorite.



The butterflies love the creeping lantana. This stuff blooms from late spring all through summer. It needs very little care and the bright yellow flowers against the dark green foliage really looks good. It grows really well too. Sometimes too well. We've had to move a few of these because they were taking over the beds.


(for some strange reason, Blogger wouldn't host this pic so I used Imageshack. Click on the pic for a larger view.)

The oak-leaf hydrangeas are pretty too. They bloom in tall spires of small flowers that fade pretty quickly. The bees love them too. I tried to snap a pic of one of them crawling around in the bloom but they are moving pretty quick. Busy little rascals.

We went to Texas about 15 years ago and while out there, stopped at some sort of little roadside stand and the guy was selling cactus plants. My wife loves any kind of cactus and so we bought a "palm" to plant when we got back home. It did really well and has the most beautiful peach colored blooms on it that you have ever seen. And it's a "wavy-leaf" cactus too. As best as I can remember, this is the only one I've seen here in Alabama. We moved to this house about 10 years ago and instead of moving the whole plant, we again just broke off two "palms" and planted them here. It's about waist high now. My wife's sister bought our old place and when we go visit them, I can never remember to look at the original one and see how big it is now. I noticed the blooms about 2 weeks ago on it and tried to remember to go get the camera after I got through mowing to take a picture of them. But I forgot. The one here had not quite bloomed yet but when I remembered to go check it, it had bloomed and died.

(again, Blogger is acting up. Click it for the bigger version)

We have 3 different colors of crepe myrtles in our yard. White, purple and fuscia. The whites always bloom first. I noticed the purples were beginnning to bloom but none were pretty enough to photograph yet. This is a white one:


That's about all the flowers that are blooming right now. Just thought I'd share these with you all.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.