Splendour in the garden

Each morning before Christmas I would look out the window and urge my little tree to flower in time for December 25th - and it did! Mind you it was such terrible weather than no one, other than me, bothered to look out of the window to admire it!

As you can tell from the bleak looking sky this picture (taken this morning) was also taken on a non sunny day - but at least the rain had stopped!  I rolled up my trouser legs to the knees and donned my heavy sneakers to venture out onto the lawn to take a few photos to share.

I have possibly left deep impressions in the lawn where I walked! The ground is absolutely sodden and although I walked slowly and carefully the mud squelched up and I discovered splashes of mud on the knee and thigh of my pink pants!

My tree must be roughly the height of my big son by now so once it has reached its potential - which I think is 20 meters - it will be an amazing sight to see if it gets this proportion of blooms on it. They are so bright and showy. I was afraid that the torrential rain that has battered us over the last few days would have ruined the flowers so it was with much relief that I found the flowers intact.
Another young tree is also making a colourful show.

This tree is a Tibouchina Austenville and has been grown from a cutting - a gift from a friend who thought it was going to be a white flowering Tibouchina. We have another tree (this same purple) that is near the house and has been cut back many many times but it is not flowering or even close to flowering at the moment. Funny that we should have so many different Tibouchina trees and they all flower at different times. Incidentally, if you are curious about the tall spikes of pink and purple flowers near the flowering eucalyptus, they are one genus of the bromilliads. I forget the name of it. The leaves are quite dangerous when I do the weeding, I always come inside covered with blood from them - they have the most evil downward pointing spikes along the edges. Colin bought me some elbow length gardening gloves to wear when near them - but I never remember to put those ones on! I do wear gloves when gardening.
AJ