Mid Week Garden Photos

Been a little busy this week getting ready for Dad's visit - he comes on Saturday! It's been awfully hot and my orchids, as well as other plants, are looking stressed. In the midst of my unhappy plants I was able to find a few photo worthy volunteers. My Tampa orchid has ONE single bloom open but many, many more waiting. It will be FABULOUS!

Isn't my shrimp plant beautiful? You can see a little of my bromeliad broder but it is stressed right now because it turned so hot when it was newly planted. I am thinking next year will be much better. Also, notice the limbs from the papaya tree - more on that below.

I have couple shots of my dendrobian that blooms on the old canes after the leafs drop off. You'll see one cane is blooming while the other is closed.
Hey! There's a man in my pool! I was taking a far away of the dendrobian and didn't realize he had moved from the other side of the pool.

I have a cactus starting to bloom. I believe these are giant red, fragrant flowers. But then again, I said that before and they weren't. I believe this is the plant that I confused with last month's bloomer.

The ever dependable psyclops is at it again. Fully opened and strange.

To be fair, I need to show garden nightmares too. OK, I bought this 5 years ago as a sapling papaya. It grew huge and we were enjoying it's fruits. Then a bad hurricane season came and bent the thing over which turned out ok because the tree had grown and the fruit was almost out of reach. Then a frost came and parts of it melted but that was ok because new branches grew and we could reachthe fruit again. Haven't been able to reach fruit, although someone has (probably rats) and we were ocnsidering removing it but it dedicded to die on it's own. It got a moldly look (possibly overspray from moving orchids outside and watering) and now the giant branches are pulling off easily. I love papaya ad will miss it.

Another bad photo of the Hot Pink orchid. I don't know what it is about me and this plant. I cannot get a clear photo and I am using the close up feature on my camera. It works in the other photos :(

Green Thumb Sunday

Instead of photo-ing the plants that are blooming, I thought I would show you photos of what is about to bloom! This time next week these plants will look quite different. As always, click for larger images. Here goes:

Actually this one is just starting to open some of the bloom spikes - big difference from yesterday when I peeked at it.

This one is a Native plant named after the city of Tampa. It is quite fragrant.

My psyclops starting to bloom AGAIN

A hanging cattleya in the wooden slatted boxes often used for vanda

This is a dendrobian that looses its leaves and then blooms directly on the canes. How wierd is that?

Looking like another white phal but I believe it should be a yellow one - guess i will know by this time next week!

This beautiful plant will be HOT pink this time next week. Sorry for not giving names of plants. I am in hurry because I need to do a quilt block for Ratbone but I promise to include the names when I repost when everything is in bloom :) Vickie