Hibiscus Flowers

We were recently at Beard Park in Little Elm. Apparently the area combined several smaller settlements to make a town, eventually with a dry goods store, post office, and more.

There is a replica house and post office there, unfortunately with a wasp infestation.  They left everyone alone though so I guess it isn't too bad really. Likely they were attracted to such flowers like the hibiscus shown here.

Growing up we had a lot of hibiscus plants.  This was another of my grandfather's breeding projects.  I really don't remember the colors we had, I was little and that was probably the least of my concerns.  Everyone knows that lizards and garden snakes are much more important.  Our yard really did have a lot of both of these. The anole were all over the house and green houses.  As for the snakes all you usually had to do was turn over one of the larger rocks to find one curled up resting.

This was only one of the colors they had out at the park.  Got a few seeds of course to see what cross pollination occurred out there. There may have been even more hibiscus flowers in the area. Pollination can happen over fairly large distances and with the number of pollinators in the area the likeliness is pretty good. We'll see what pops up.

Hummingbirds in the Garden

We got a hummingbird feeder for the backyard and they're already hovering around it.  The most we've seen at a time is two so far.

They were already attracted to our yard with our plumeria plant so it wasn't really a surprise to see them. One of them has a red throat.  Not this one though.  I haven't looked into it but I'm guessing it's a male thing?  Will have to look it up later.

Ok, it's later and yep it's a male thing.  The females have no red coloring.  It might be a mated pair then that we're seeing come around.  That would make sense since they aren't chasing each other off.  Hummingbirds can be territorial and aggressive to interlopers.

The cats have taken a keen interest in the hummingbirds coming around and have jumped at the window more than once trying to catch them.  We have since bought another hanger for the feeder and moved it further into the yard.  That also keeps the other birds away from it and less likely to scare each other away.

Plumeria Flower

Our plumeria puts out mostly yellow flowers with just this tinge of pink.  The pink is much more noticeable on the back though.

This is after a day of falling off of the plant.  It's still holding its shape.  Probably why they are so useful in making leis. Abundance is nice since they grow all over Hawaii but if they wilted in an hour they would pretty much be useless for crafts.

This got me to wondering if you could use them elsewhere.  I quickly found a unanimous "Don't Eat Them."  Ok, I won't.

They are used in fragrances though to varying degrees. Some claim to be just like the scent but reviews range all over the place.  About what you'd expect for any product.

This was one of my grandmother's favorite scents though and she had a candle that did smell just like plumerias, although she liked to use the word frangipani which made finding out exactly what it was, once I grew up and didn't remember clearly what she called it, difficult to say the least.  So nice I can go outside right now and smell it straight from the plant.

Plumeria Flowers

The flowers are getting further along.  I wasn't really sure what to expect but it wasn't this.  I had though there would be a couple flowers here and there but this looks like it's going to spread and keep making more clusters.

Really though I think it's about done with the splitting.  Maybe about 15 flowers from my count.  It's nice that they are spread out like this though so they can really show off.  I can't wait until it gets bigger and really gets blooming.  Some of the trees we've seen in Hawaii have hundreds of blooms at once.

It's about to hit 100 degrees outside so I really need to be on keeping everything watered.  Heat is the number one thing that kills a garden around here.  I'll probably need to water at least twice a day if not more when the heat is unbearable outside.  We're also on the lake so I'm expecting that the humidity will keep up with it and maybe drop the temps around the house at least a degree or two.

One thing I don't know about this plant is what color the blooms will be.  There are so many different colors it could be from white to deep burgundy.  I'll just have to wait and see what I got. If you haven't been reading the rest of the blog, I got this plant from a friend who originally bought it for her mom but hadn't picked it up from us for some time and was sweet enough to let us have it after we planted it and took care of it for over a month.

If you have a favorite plumeria color or favorite flower in general I'd love to hear about it.