I realize that at first glance this is quite a dull looking patch of flowers BUT they're the Central American version of butterfly weed, and we actually have several patches of them for the butterflies (and humming birds, too) -

If you take a close look, you can see this beauty:

Or this one:

We've seen many other species of butterfly sipping nectar plus 5 species of humming birds, unfortunately, as yet, have not been successful at getting a photo of the humming birds....

The garden is thriving

Welcome - come take a virtual walk with me down a garden path -


This patch of bird beak heliconias has been blooming for months - if you look close, you can see the eaves of the garage behind them... there's a large parking area there, too, but that's impossible to see.

We have many types of heliconias in the garden - ginger and bananas are in the botanical family, as well as this bizarre flower:

Here's another photo of it, which (hopefully) will give you a better idea of it's size - and how close to the ground it grows... that white thing is a 1/2 inch tube ... while the flowers are close to the ground, the plant is taller than I am:

This is a corner Maria, our gardener, and I are currently working on:

And this is the path we're walking:


This plant 'volunteered itself' ... in other words, no one has any idea where it came from, but it's certainly interesting - this is the back view of it -

And this is the front of the flower ... I've never seen anything exactly like it, before.

Actually, I'm not surprised when plants move into the garden - plants grow EVERYWHERE on the edge of the rainforest - that odd lump on the right is a rock:

This is the back of that rock and that plant on the left is an orchid - actually several of our rocks are covered with the small, native orchids.

Even the tree trunks are covered with other plants - and yes, that's yet another orchid covered rock next to it:

And here is another rocky view - that odd football looking thing in the upper right hand corner is a banana blossom (and yes, it actually is about the size of a football - the rock is about the size of a VW Beetle.

So, that's it for today's garden tour ... it's wet season and I need to keep the camera dry.