Saturday, January 17, 2009

winter beauty in Cali

While many of our family members are enjoying the beauty of wintry, snowy days, we are blessed with the beauty that surrounds us in the land of sunshine and warmer days. These mini-roses in front of our home bloom almost year around.
This is a blossom from a vine that climbs on the wall in our back yard.
Geraniums are a favorite of mine, and we have several pots of red geraniums gracing the front of our house...
and also pink geraniums! And after several tries, a lovely Hibiscus is thriving in the "gardenette" on our patio.
Some plants growing in front of our house-lots of green.

Some of the Asian Persimmons from a tree in our backyard. (Sorry, I didn't get any pictures while the tree was loaded with the ripe. red-orange fruit a month ago. Right now, it looks like a dead tree that should be chopped down! So... we must remember well that not everything that appears to be dead and worthless, really is!)
We also have a small orange tree in our backyard. It produces the sweetest, most succulent oranges! This year, however, only one, lonely orange graces that little tree...We will enjoy every bite of this orange!Last year, our newest tree-a guava- produced nine little guavas. This year almost every branch had nine guavas on it! We have been enjoying this fruit in our morning smoothies.
A year ago, these palm trees were planted close to our house. (Actually, the one in the middle is a cell phone tower and the other two are planted to camouflage it.) The tree on the right is located right in front of our house, and for the longest time we were convinced that it was dead and should be removed. Then about two months ago, our gardener clipped apart the ropes that had bound the brown, dead fronds together--and surprisingly, there were green fronds hiding underneath! These palms need to be trimmed back soon, but for now we are just enjoying the fact that they are alive!
For those of you that know me well, you know that one of my favorite flowers is the Bird of Paradise. This was taken a couple months ago, but I just love this unique plant. What a blessing to know the Creator who has blessed us with all this beauty to enjoy!

3 comments:

Candis Berge said...

Great pictures. So different then the ones I've been posting! No flowers out here!

doug&margarethe said...

Oh the beauty of flowers and colors when all we seem to see is snow and more snow and then slush! Thanks for the reminders of colors and flowers to come. God's creation is awesome!

Leingang Family said...

What beautiful flowers! It brought back all kinds of memories from living in AZ!