Orange Bounty

Today I have bounty of orange hibiscus! Orange flowers are harder to find than the prevalent pink ones so I’m always searching (marigolds don’t’ work well for me since the smell isn’t suited for the close quarters I have in my garden, and they tend to be aphid magnets) but these one-day-wonders are definitely filling the need for floral sunshine!

A Blooming Day!

What a blooming day! I looked out this morning and discovered that the red-violet clematis bloom had begun opening with two orange hibiscus and two pink daylilies joining it for a colorful parade!

Heavy storms are expected this afternoon but I’ve never had problems with wind even up to 85 mph, so I think things will be fine. “Large hail” on our car may be another story but we’ve never had a problem with that before either. I hope today is a beautiful, colorful day for you—wherever you live.

Similar Yet Different

Today both my hibiscuses are blooming! Though the differences don’t show in the picture, the red hibiscus plant is tall and lanky, and the orange one is a small mound of dark green leaves. The red flower measures seven inches across while the orange is only four inches in diameter. And of course they sport different colors and petal structure. The red petals are long and curl back gracefully while the orange petals are shorter and curve only slightly. Yet they’re both hibiscuses. They’re both flowering plants. They’re both green, leafy plants. They’re both created by God to beautify his world. People also come in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors but we’re all people. In fact, every person who has ever lived on the face of the earth can trace their lineage to the first people on earth—Adam and Eve, and more recently than that, to Noah and his three sons and daughters-in-law. We’re all kin. We’re all God’s creation (though not “all God’s children” see Romans 8:14). One person is really tall and another is really short—so what? One person is black, another brown or white—so what? There’s only one race—the human race. Though we’re all one people, God likes variety in his plants and animals and in his people—it’s the spice of life.

Four!

On Saturday, every time I caught a glimpse of the red hibiscus bush, I exclaimed in amazement, “Four!” Four blossoms opened on one day! I’ve never seen so many on this bush at one time—perhaps there’s some beauty queen competition now that there’s a new hibiscus in the garden. I know, I know, plants don’t think. I exclaimed in wonderment so many times that my husband was beginning to think I was losing my memory since each time it sounded like I hadn’t seen them before.☺ Wonder shouldn’t expire with familiarity.

Gardener’s Friend

Look what I found! Can you see it? It’s an earthworm, one of a gardener’s greatest friends—in a pot on a second floor balcony! I found it when turning up the soil for planting (yes, even potting soil can benefit from loosening up) and was glad I didn’t damage it in the process, though they can grow back missing parts—given the right conditions. I hope it hides well so the birds don’t make lunch of it.

I found some interesting facts about earthworms on this site:http://urbanext.illinois.edu/worms/facts/index.html , such as, they eat their weight everyday—I hate to think about the 22 foot long earthworm found in South Africa! Earthworms have to have the right conditions, this site says, or “they’ll go somewhere else” so my garden must measure up. But what do they eat? If they live near the surface they eat fallen leaves and dead grass, especially the bacteria that live on such organic matter but when they live in deeper dirt—they eat dirt! http://www.professorshouse.com/Your-Home/Gardening-Plants/General/Articles/What-Do-Worms-Eat/


Yesterday’s orange hibiscus finally opened—here’s a picture of the colorful orange beauty with it's magenta throat. It’s still open today in the early afternoon though the edges of the petals are curling. Even fleeting beauty is still beauty.

Another Beauty Queen

Yesterday was yet another Red Hibiscus Day but now that beauty has competition—or perhaps a companion in beauty. I finally found an orange hibiscus I liked (size, price, color). The orange flowers are smaller than the red and seem to be slower to open but they have an unusual deep pink throat; when I saw the color combination, I knew it was the one.

The red flowers would have been open at dawn while these are only half-opened at mid-day. It’s possible that the orange ones will stay open longer. We’ll see. The bush is full of buds so I’ll be posting plenty of pictures in weeks to come.


I put it in the sun to see if it would open faster and keep checking in hope that I can show you how it looks fully open. Alas, that will have to be for another post but it did make a little progress—here’s a picture of a half-opened orange hibiscus.