For no obvious reason, today I looked down at an orchid plant that sits, rather neglected, under the stairs out my back door. Low and behold it has a flower.
Then I looked around at the other flowers adorning the area near my back door and I felt a bit guilty for ignoring their beauty in my obsession to produce food in my garden. Here are a few of the nicer ones that I saw without having to leave the bottom of my stairs.
First another orchid – I have no idea about orchids or what this is called, but the colour of the flowers is magnificent.
Next comes a passionfruit flower. This flower I know because it turns into something quite tasty. But even if it didn’t, it’s always been one of my favourite flowers. Always, that is, since I first saw one. Passion fruit didn’t grow in Seattle. I first layed eyes on the vine when I moved to Australia and have coveted the plants ever since. There is something wonderfully otherworldly about these flowers.
Finally, a couple of plants that grow pretty much as weeds in my garden. The yellowy one I know is a shrimp plant. The red one, beats me.
There are heaps more flowers out there, many that come along as a bonus with herbs, vegetables or fruit trees, and plenty that just bloom because that’s what they do. Even though I can be neglectful, I do appreciate their brightening my garden.
Laura Rittenhouse's Gardening Journal 
Oooh you have some lovely flowers. That second orchid I think is a crucifix orchid – you can see the crucifix shape – a very unusual colors – ours here are all orange. I love the passionfruit flowers, and don’t they smell divine? I wish my shrimp plant would do better – it struggles for some reason, and for most people it grows like a weed. That last flower is a canna lilly – they like lots of water. Funny how we grow so many of the same plants and yet our weather is quite different.
Okay, crucifix orchid and canna lilly – got it (until I forget it). The canna lilly shows up in random spots around the edge of my garden and does tend to look rather tragic in mid-summer. Could be that it likes lots of water. More your garden’s condition than mine. But now that I know I’ll probably take pity on them and water them even though they don’t produce fruit (I’m pretty ruthless with water rations – our rainwater tanks once ran dry and I didn’t like that at all).
Like you I keep being surprised by how many plants our gardens share. I think it shows how flexible nature is rather than how magnificent our gardening skills are though 🙂
The color of that crucifix orchid is really unbelievable. Oh, how beautiful the tropical flowers. You are so fortunate to have all of that in one single yard.
And, yes, thank goodness mother nature perseveres in spite of us!