Good to the Last Flower

Another long day has ended. More stuff and more plants have left the premises.

The Buttercup Tree keeps on keeping on. It is spitting out flowers on some of the water sprout branches forming on its beheaded major limbs. Such radical pruning of trees generally causes the opposite of the intended effect and makes the tree grow taller much faster. It's next pruning may be even more radical, like to the ground.














My patch of the Blue Louisiana Iris is putting on its first flowers. Some plant shoppers spotted them before me and it helped spur the sale of quite a few of them.
















The Torch Ginger didn't even seem to take a rest this past winter and now are blooming up a storm as I dig up starts to sell from around the edge of the patch. The common light blue Agapanthus have a few early blooms next door. I want to dig these up too before I go.

















The strange gardener in paradise, me, growing Juniperus procumbens. To most people it is so not the image of tropical Hawaii. People would actually recoil when seeing it and dismiss it with disdain. When they would give you the list of requirements they want in a groundcover, short, low water, full sun, no maintenance, year round interest, keeps out weeds and of course, that would bloom 365 days a year, except for the flowers, this Juniper fit all the other criteria. Sadly for many people every plant in the garden must have a bloom. The idea of placing another blooming type of plant next to this as a groudcover would not compute. This Juniper was not tropical. It did not fulfill the fantasy.

Its much more common use in Hawaii is as a fake Bonsai.

















Some of my plants look much better in the neighbors yard. The White Shrimp plant mixes with A'ali'i, Dodonaea viscosa. I collected both of these as cuttings and seed respectively in the wild during my explorations on Maui. One is now a desired native plant and the other is a very pretty slightly invasive weed.




















I think it is safe to say my neighbors were never bored when they looked into my garden.