You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Sunflower’ tag.
“Why would you want to live in the desert? It’s so brown!”
“There’s no color in the desert.”
“Nothing blooms in the summer in Phoenix – it’s too hot!”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, what a bunch of baloney! The Sonoran Desert is alive with color all summer long, despite temps that can reach above 115 degrees. All sorts of trees, shrubs and cactus have showy flowers throughout June, July and August.
That’s true of any summer in Phoenix. But this summer, the summer of 2021, we’ve had the healthiest monsoon season in years. Awesome amounts of rain all through July and so far through August as well. Shrubs that have been sparse in their flowering (for example, ones that are not on irrigation), have exploded with fresh color.
I thought those of you in other parts of the country (and world) would get a kick out of seeing what a desert city in bloom looks like, so I’ve been snapping pics for the past few weeks. Some of the cactus bloomed right before the rains first started, but the rest of the plants had the benefits of the monsoons. You’ll see flowering cactus, annuals, perennials, and shrubs in the photos below. If you have specific questions about what a certain plant is, just let me know and I’ll ID it for ya.
I hope you enjoy this photo journey of rain-happy flowers in Phoenix.
Here we are at the “look at that purple shrub!” section of the post. These fall under the umbrella of the generic term “sage,” but they’re not Salvias – these are Leucophyllums. And they have been spectacular!
The sages loooove monsoon rains. For a few weeks, everywhere you looked around the city there were pops of purple, or rows of royalty, haha! Definitely a nice addition to any landscape.
The monsoons cleared out temporarily as of last night. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when we have a few days of sunshine again. I’ll be keeping an eye out for what’s blooming and take pics whenever I can.
On an unrelated note, there is a certain one of our very own Experts, a lady of charm and distinction, with superior intelligence and unmatched compassion, known far and wide as a National Treasure, aka Dottie Correll, who is turning a whopping 95 years old on Saturday. 95! She’s doing great. If you’d like to wish her a happy birthday, please do so in the comments and I’ll happily pass them along for you.
Hey look! Lots of photos of pretty flowers blooming in and around mi casa:
Indoors, Lady Evermore, an Aeschynanthus plant, is rocking some blooms:
And so is the adorable Echeveria on the windowsill:
(Still!)
Thanks to Carol over at May Dreams Gardens for encouraging us to post photos of what’s blooming in and around our houses on the 15thish of each month. Check out her blog for more pretty flowers.
If you don’t have a blog but would still like to share your flower photos, you can email them to me. Recently I’ve been posting them the day after my own, but tomorrow I have an all-new Ask the Experts scheduled. So let’s aim for Tuesday to publish them instead, our August Garden Nonbloggers’ Bloom Day. That will give you the weekend to shoot photos and get them to me. You can also post them on my facebook wall.
I’ll be back tomorrow with the Experts. Hope to see you here!
Ya’ll know how much I love flowers. Here are my favorite flower photos – taken in and around my casa – in the month of September:
Thanks to our hostess Carol over at May Dreams Gardens for suggesting we post photos of what’s blooming on the 15th of each month.
Hope you have a great weekend, I’ll be back Monday.
As if this blog wasn’t already crammed with enough flower photos, here are some more!
Yay for beautiful flowers!
I love my back door container garden. The containers are a lot of work, but worth the abundant rewards. Blooming is Gaillardia ‘Blanket Flower’, Portulaca, Dimorphotheca (or Osteospermum), Bougainvillea, Petunias and Miss Mimosa, the Mimosa pudica ‘Sensitive Plant’.
(The E is for my first name, Elise.)
Inside, my Chlorophytum comosum, Nel, commonly known as a ‘Spider Plant’, has been blooming consistently for months:
And so has Sweetie, a Euphorbia milii:
And so has Lady Evermore, an Aeschynanthus:
An explosion of blooms – I love it!
Special thanks to Carol over at May Dreams Gardens for suggesting we post photos of what’s blooming in and around the house on the 15thish of each month. Check out her site to see flower photos from all over the world.
What’s blooming at your casa?
I’ll be back manana, hope to see you here.
Good To Grow 