Yes, I did go overboard with pictures of Kangaroo Paws! I have always found them fascinating and am entranced with the red variety that I saw for the first time just a few years ago. Before that the standard yellow blossoms were just coming into popularity with gardeners in SCalifornia. I had a pot when we lived in Fullerton, but managed to kill it when they are not all that easy to expire! From the green thumb of my early adulthood I have turned into the kiss of death for almost everything I try. Not paying enough attention, I expect.
At this Corona del Mar house on the Sherman Gardens' Annual Garden Tour the landscaper had planted red Kangaroo Paws along the sidewalk in a rather narrow space in front of a white painted wall. They are quite spectacular. This view is from the front yard of the house. 
Planted close together they help to hold each other upright so the branches don't bar the walk and while they are in bloom they create a thick mass of fuzzy blooms.
Here is Liz standing on the sidewalk to give you a street side view. Notice the elegant shadows.
The blooms are in bunches at the ends of the stalks and branches - just like paws on the ends of a kangaroo's legs.
The ends of the buds open into these colorful stars.
And the edges of the chartreuse flowers show from the back of the 'paws'.
See how fuzzy the blooms are - as if they have actual kangaroo fur!
By the time we arrived at this house it was 4pm, so the light was changing and the volunteer ladies sitting under their beige umbrellas on the sidewalk were more than ready to go home. We missed one house because it was just too late. The map they provided had one error that had us going around in circles until I dug out the Orange County Thomas Bros. book map and we were able to figure it out. This is not an area I am familiar with now, although I worked at a facility nearby - about forty years ago when it was mostly just open land with some cattle ranching. Now it is all upscale housing and upscale boutiques and upscale restaurants and... well, you get the idea, it is entirely new-to-me territory. More garden pictures tomorrow.
2 comments:
These are totally new flowers to me. It's always astonishes me how I can have missed so much beauty in my 68 years. Southern California could just as well be Syria for all I know about the foliage there.
So thanks:-)
SoCal has THE best plants and flowers - I was in heaven last year just looking at those purple trees (what were they?).Thanks again for posting the fuzzy red plants. Wow!
Post a Comment