Flower Pictures, With Friends and Foe

I'm not sure if I really like gardening, but one thing I am sure of, I love to reap what I sew. If you are ambitious in the fall and have a few bucks to throw away on flowers, you could make your yard pop with bulbs and fill your camera card with flower pictures. Tulips, Daffodils, Hyacinth, and Crocus just to name a few, are a great way to bring life to your yard in the spring, and it's my favorite time of year.

Each year I try growing different flowers to test which ones grow well in my region and also to test which flowers need little or no maintenance, but most important, which flowers have the best show with the most vivid colors. I have a collection of flower pictures that I will share with you, and hopefully it will inspire you to add some of these beauties to your own garden.

My favorite flower is the wave petunia, unfortunately every year I grow them they get eaten by a little green worm half way through the season and I lose all my flowers, otherwise I would have them everywhere because of the spectacular show and ease of care to maintain them. So let's take a tour of the flowers I have had success with, and see if my flower pictures inspire you to try different flowers in your own garden, or if you would rather just enjoy pictures of other people's flowers.

Here are a few pictures I took in the spring with just a point and shoot Fuji S5200 Digital camera. If you plan to take your own flower pictures, use your camera in Macro mode for close up shots with no zoom, or very little zoom, they will come out crystal clear, something to be proud of.

I had pulled in the driveway one spring evening, and as I looked at my yard, I noticed this one yellow daffodil in the middle of several red tulips, it caught my attention immediately, so I grabbed my camera and started shooting, and these are my results.

Where I live in the US, black eyed susan grow wild but I love to have them in the yard because of the spectacular show the produce, add a few cone flowers to the mix and you can have flowers for years without ever having to plant a seed. I have a 10'x10' garden in the yard that is filled with cone flowers and black eyed susan, they attract plenty of butterflies and sometimes an occasional humming bird.

Sunflowers grow huge; sometimes 16' tall and there show is big! I took some great pictures of my sunflowers, I couldn't get over how tall they grow, and when they start to seed, the birds come running. I tried yellow and red sunflowers, both were a huge hit with me, but you really need the room for these monsters, very photogenic.

The morning glory is another favorite of mine, easy to grow, just need water and plenty of sunlight. Morning glories will seed themselves each year; the seeds are in a tough shell and can withstand the coolest winters. I never have to worry if I will have morning glories the following year, I must pull hundreds of them and only save a few, they will takeover your yard if you let them. The morning glory comes in so many beautiful colors, but I admire the blue the most.

The dahlia is a great flower in any size, but the dinner plate dahlia is awesome, but high maintenance. The flowers get so big and heavy that you have to steak them so the branches don't break in the rain or high winds; also, the dahlia is a tuber and will not survive any cold winter temperatures below 0 deg. You can dig them up and store them in a cool dry place but my results were that the flowers didn't have the same impact the following year. They are beautiful flowers but are a lot of work.

The hibiscus is a show stopper, if placed in a sunny area and watered daily; the hibiscus will flower continuously throughout the summer with beautiful tropical flowers. The hibiscus will not survive in temperatures below freezing, but you can bring them in for the winter and place them in a window facing the south, also you will need to water the plant at least twice a week and drench it. In the spring, place it back outside and enjoy it for another season.

I do have a Hibiscus that survives the winter but it is the dinner plate size Hibiscus, it has waxy leaves and grows about 5' tall in one season. I cut it back to the ground each fall and in the spring it pops back up. This Hibiscus need lots of sun and it also likes to be protected from the wind because of the size of it flowers. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this plant and the growing season has ended.

Mums in the fall are by far the best bloomers, sold in a wide range of colors; you can find some to blend into your landscape as if they were meant to there. I had a few friends hanging around one day waiting for a photo op, so I broke out the camera and started shooting, wow! They just wouldn't leave so I ended up taking some great pictures.

I know that the Christmas cactus is an indoors plant but I need to share with you the stunning snapshots I took, it is absolutely gorgeous and the show will go on for another few weeks. I don't understand why they named it the Christmas cactus, it never blooms around Christmas, and it always blooms around Thanksgiving. This plant likes it very sunny and the soil need to stay slightly moist, then you can have blooms like this.

I have some photos that are unique, and I really didn't want to categorize them, but I thought you might find them interesting. Some of the plants I do not know the names, the pictures were taken in St Lucia while I was on vacation and I never caught their names. I also have a few critters in the pictures that are quite unusual, so I added them to my picture collection because they eat the very plants and flowers that are in this hub. I hope these little guys interest you instead of gross you out, they are part of our world and they probably live in your plants right now, but they are camouflaged so well, you can't see them.

I hope I have inspired you to try different flowers in your garden and enlightened you on some of the possibilities gardening offers you. If you like what you see, leave me a comment, if you don't like what you see, leave me a comment :) If you have any questions about flowers, throw it out there, I might have the answer, I might not.

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