I Never Promised You a Rose Garden...

Easter has come and gone, but my Easter Lilies didn't know that the holiday came so early this year!! They're just now opening into blossoms. Oh, Easter was here, and there WERE lily buds, but none opened 'til this week. It's not nice to fool mother nature. Right? It makes April a very long month. LOL Along with the lily plants, I was out watering in the front yard area along the foundation, and mixed in with the ferns, I happened to notice that the amaryllis are getting heavy with budding and the red one is beginning to open with its deep rich ruby red color!! I'm always thrilled to see that they survive the harsh winters for the past three years now, not because of extreme cold temperatures, but the drought. During the winter months, the bulbs are all that 'peek' through the soil...looking mighty forlorn and dried up. But each Spring, so far, they perk up and the green shoots appear. Guess they're more hardy than I realized. Besides the red amaryllis, I have a salmon pink one, a white one, and a pink/white striped. They're just budding, no full bloom yet, but the anticipation is always something I keep a close vigil on 'til they ARE in full bloom. My mother had them in Colorado as houseplants and they bloomed for the Christmas season, but here in South Texas, they do well outdoors in the ground.

Also, in the back yard, the Oriental Iris have bloomed and are now on their way to summer dormancy once again.

This is the best time of year for roses. Altho, I took most of ours out last year 'cause they suffered badly without enough rainfall, I still have a few. The Pink Don Juan Climbing Rose, and the Don Juan Red Climbing rose that I trained to meander in and through the Texas Sage Bush. Of course the Lady Banks Rose doesn't really get too badly damaged as it's a 'desert dweller'...very tolerant of extreme heat and dry, arid zones. Earlier, it bloomed profusely, but it too is now finished for the season. Along one of the birding trails in Port Aransas, the flowers that they have along the path before you arrive at the ponds, those roses were gorgeous in the shaded areas below the fern like leaf draping of the mighty mesquite trees.The yellow rose, of course, so rich in color was the one that attracted me from the beginning. The red roses were deep and rich, but mostly quite a lot of insect damage it seemed; not too pretty so I skipped over them and photographed the lucious pink variety!! Along with the roses and mesquite trees, the path winds around the fencing and an abundance of other flowers create a walk of nothing but color. Purple, pink, yellow, white, orange, blue...all colors of the rainbow. From roses, to vines of trumpet flowers, petunias, and oh so many more that I really can't recall all of them at the moment of this typing. Even along the shoreline of the Corpus Christi bay, in the sandy, more prarie-like surroundings that mingle with the beach and tidal ponds between Corpus Christi and Portland Texas, the beautiful candelabras of the yucca jut out of the dense brushland with beauty in the creamy white blossoms!! To me, with the beach and subtropical climate, when a desert plant thrives to a majestic size and covers the landscape so nicely, it's an extra treat to view along the normally overgown bushy areas of this particular birding trail!! I like the bay water backdrop in the scenes I see in Spring. Oh, and not to leave out this one; a favorite rose that is in our front yard. In fact there are four that are situated along the foundation of the front of the house, and they're more or less quite a bit 'evergreen'. Yes, they bloom nearly year 'round. February seems to be the only month they don't bloom. But the entire eleven remaining months, there are blossoms seen [tho sporadic at times]. In Spring of course, when the temps are mild, without extreme heat, their blossoms are especially pretty and robust! They remind me of wild roses, and the fragrance is quite similar to a wild rose also. But they are a patented rose, the "Simplicity". Someday, when this nasty El Nino or La Nina moves out of the drought stricken state of Texas, I plan to replace the roses I had to dig up. No rain, and all the watering each and every day didn't keep them alive and well. It was a sad day for me 'cause roses are a favorite flower.