Annie's Blog

The New Year has taken off quickly, leaving me on the back foot already..

I arrived in Melbourne to be greeted by this lovely jar of protea in my room and left with a present, lucky me..and lots of memories of fun with the grandkids there was a lovely daphne at my sister's place...much prettier than the one at my place.. there were many beautiful native flowers at my sister's place as well as these orchids and this bromeliad and arrived home to this beautiful unusually variegated poinsettia at a friend's place.

the bromeliad is a bit late flowering this year, I usually see them at Easter. loved these shots of the agapanthus and the seedpod.... and of course the zygocactus is looking good too....

My bromeliads are starting to flower...as they usually do at this time of the year! Sorry I don't know the names of these blue and yellow flowers...or the orange one either. I found a second nerine in the garden...good to know I have two of them! A jacaranda ..flowering in March,,quite unusual! And these trees are in flower. This is not a very good photo, but they are yellow flowers! If you would like to see other flowers from contributors from around the world, please click on the TODAY'S FLOWERS icon over in the sidebar!

BEFORE I BEGIN THE CHALLENGE TALK, could I please alert you to the prayer request in my sidebar ..Many thanks to those of you who have already prayed for the situation in Victoria...my son, sister (and brother in NSW) and their families are all safe and well this morning. Praise God. [Unfortunately not all have been so lucky, and upwards of 35 people lost their lives in fires there yesterday]! The Brenda Photo Challenge this week, was great fun for me. "Patterns" , I thought. Great. Just down my alley! And then I saw the "Textures" bit. Oh . mmm..that is a bit more difficult. But then I saw these photos of mine from New York, and thought they might qualify for Texture Photos. And of course some of these photos of some of the flowers and things from the Botanic Gardens at Mt Cootha near here I thought might qualify too! And of course I can never resist trying to take photos of the bark when it is peeling off the trees. This is what left of a lotus flower after the...

Last week I found the LOTUS flowers out at the Botanic Gardens They grow in this tiny little rectangle outside the library and admin buldings. the native bees thought they were pretty good too! then I went in to look at the bromeliad display...this one was most unusual! even the cycad was in flower outside...it is a long time since I lived in Darwin on 5 acres and had these growing all over the place meanwhile back to the bromeliads...a lot of my photos were out of focus..silly me, as I had the camera on the wrong setting... but this one wasn't too bad.... another look at the lotus on my way out! Then the pink flwoering tree down the road was out...so I took a photo of it...unfortuantely this isnt it...this is mine in a previous year...my flowers this year are coming out slowly one by one... It is such a pretty thing, and I don't even know the name and the poincianas are coming out too...just as the jacarandas are fading...it seems early for the poincianas... I went u...