We’ve cleared away a good deal of the “jungle” in front of my house, but are busy planting other plants to replace it, including this Heliconia which now sports four blooms. This is the newest one.
For Cee’s FOTD
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lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
I’m curious, do you guys have the same drought restrictions that Southern California is dealing with?
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No. We are at the beginning of our rainy season and have had two huge storms already.
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Is the top one a bud, that it’s a different color?
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No, it is just drying out. It would have been the first to pop out since they grow down from the bottom end.
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When I said four blooms I didn’t mean this was the four blooms. Each bloom has a number of flowers on it… This bloom had four but may open up and produce more.
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We cleaned out the gardens and lawns too. We didn’t have to plant anything, but we at least uncovered a lot of flowers that were so scrunched in by weeds, we forgot we’d ever planted them.
I think Heliconia is grown only indoors around here. You’ve got a wonderful climate. I bet you can grow everything.
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I need to get down to the spare lot garden.. It has just been so hot or pelting rain…Perhaps that will soon change.
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We can’t grow plants that require cold weather to germinate or flower.
But anything subtropical thrives. And many of the plants I grew in CA grow here. Just larger and faster!
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This had become a botany lesson
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That happens.
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Beautiful~! I too have been planting more succulents, orchids, and bromeliads into potted planters to make them easier to take care of in this extreme heat and winter cold. As to my wildflowers they have suffered this terrible summer of HOT DRY HEAT, not blooming as profusely as in the past, but all are still alive and I have high hopes for them. My succulents are now in small window boxes and planters that will be easier to take inside and properly water and my large deep windows in my house allow them plenty of light.
I envy you with the tropical climate which I so miss from times past. The upside is that the humming birds, not having as much wildflowers specially grown for them, are now spending more time at my feeders near my house porch, which is a pleasure to me.
If I was younger I would be looking to move to a tropical forest down south. I love this place but it is becoming too crowded by other ignorant people, pushing the space into smaller crowded beer places, wine places, wedding places, B-n-B tourist traps, and loud, noisy, clouded play spots; turning the solitude into what they have in town. The beauty of the Texas Hill country is becoming a mad destroyed place, not fit for the wild life and no longer what attracted them in the first place. SAD~!!!!
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Yes. Strange how people do that. Move somewhere new and then try to turn it into the place they just left. It happens here, too, with the newer people moving south from the U.S.
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