I've missed flowers. I've missed tulips and peonies and geraniums and petunias and sweet peas and more. I've even missed my flower boxes that I used to wonder why I planted because I had to water them every single day.
BUT
There are some pretty and interesting plants here too. Here are a few that I've taken pictures of:
There are a lot of spiky plants here. The only one I know the name of is the one on the left in the foreground. It is called Brazil plant. You can't tell from my great photograph, but each spike is round and firm. They look good in a pot,and I wish I could bring one home for a houseplant, but I doubt I could get it through customs.
The big round shaped one in the middle is one of my favorites, BUT, every leave has a tough, sharp thorn on the end of it. They could be vicious.
This isn't the finest specimen of this bush, but you get the idea. The blooms seem to last forever. This bush is at the airport. We go there all the time and I have never seen it without blossoms. That's what I call awesome blossoms.
I've tried a number of times to get a picture of this type of tree in bloom that really shows the intensity of the orange color. This doesn't come close, but it is as good as I can do. I hear that in other parts of Brazil they have varieties with yellow and red blooms, but I've only seen orange here. They are gorgeous.
Another very mediocre photo, but if you look closely you can see some yellow blossoms that hang in clusters from this tree. Also, you can see a plant with a very large leaf that uses this tree to climb on. I like the combination of leaf shapes and the variations of green colors.
This is a ficus tree. It's been trimmed to give it this full shape. I took a picture of it because it was an amazement to me. I've tried more than one of these in Idaho as a houseplant at one time or another. They always looked so great at the store and then when I brought them home the leaves would drop like crazy. I'm talking plug-up-the-vacuum-hose crazy.
Usually a few leaves would stay on the plant; just enough to make me think it might live. I would nurse it along until there would be only 7 or 8 leaves left. Then I would pray it would die so I could throw it out without a guilty conscience. There is nothing like a mostly dead houseplant looking back at you to make you feel bad about yourself.
Here are some more ficus trees that have grown big enough to shade cars. They are such show offs.
See what I mean about dead looking plants? They just aren't good for your self-esteem.....or their's either probably.
I took this picture when we were at the Missionarey Training Center in Sao Paulo. By using plants with varying colors of green and varying textures, they created some beautiful grounds without using flowers. (Those air conditioning things or what ever they are a not quite camouflaged, but, they probably look worse because I took the picture from above.)
I can't believe I don't have a better picture of the bouganville that grows so well here. It often cascades over the walls that are around all the houses. This one shows some of the variety in the colors, but if you want to see how vivid the colors are when it's at it peak, you'll have to look at some images on the Internet.
I can't leave this one out. It must be super hardy because it is in hedges everywhere, almost to the point that you take it for granted. It is always in bloom even in the dry time of the year.
And I couldn't leave out the plants in the pot holes here. They really aren't growing in the pot hole, though sometimes it takes so long for a pot hole to be fixed, I think a plant that size could. I haven't been able to figure out who puts the branches there to warn unsuspecting drivers, but I see it all the time. You can tell by the size of that pot hole, that their efforts are appreciated.
I guess when you paint houses such fun, vibrant colors, it sort of makes up for the lack of flowers, but, I'm still looking forward to them. I'm itching to get my hands back in the dirt, unless it's windy. Oh yeah.... the wind. I almost forgot about the wind.
