Time for Flowers!

I think it's been too long since I did a flower post! So here we go...

First, you will not believe what I found growing in my yard last week:

Yep, right there in the corner of my yard, this scraggly-good-for-nothing bush turned out to be a poinsettia!

Good thing I didn't tear it out! Because I have decided to tear out a bunch of overgrown junk and replace it with some MUCH NEEDED flowers.

There was a lot of stuff along the driveway that looked like this:


As I began tearing it out I found it was all planted in pots, now broken, and stuck in the ground. Or maybe the pots were set on the ground and the ground overtook them. Seriously, you never know around here! Here is the result of my demolition:


See, the thing is, last week I FINALLY made it to the wholesale flower market - a place I had wanted to visit since before I ever came over the first time. And if I thought I had died and gone to heaven at the FABRIC market, well... That was NOTHING in my book compared to the flower market.

I was limited in my purchasing by the fact that I was intending to take the MRT home. (Except I discovered that I had forgotten my MRT pass at home so I had to take a taxi.) Also I was not sure how much anything would cost and I didn't want to break the bank. It being a wholesale market, or perhaps because it's Taiwan, I don't know, anyhow there were no prices that I could see so I didn't know what I was getting into until I went to pay. I had chosen 10 or 12 small pots of flowers and approached the lady to pay. There I found that the price was 7 for NT$100 (or about US$3!!!!) So I chose a few more to get my purchase up to 14 plants and spent about $6!

Oh my, I think I could almost hyperventilate just thinking about it, even now. I want to go back with a TRUCK and fill it with flowers!

These beauties were (sadly!) not part of my flower market finds. I had purchased them some days earlier at a flower store where I am certain I paid way too much. I saw identical plants at the market and was going to punish myself by finding out how much too much I had paid. Alas, the proprietor of the stall was busy talking with a paying customer so I did not glean the information. But you know, I have quite a large garden so it is not out of the question that I could acquire more!

The next pictures are not from my garden, but from another park I visited. I will post park pictures next (maybe) but for now here are the flowers I found in the park:

(Yeah, I was kind of desperate for flower pictures. Generally speaking it seems like Taiwanese are not too interested in flowers. They seem to only use flowers that grow on bushes or trees which are alright, but I like garden flowers that grow in abundance and produce a profusion of color. Thus far I haven't seen that here.)

At my home there are 2 bushy areas that look to me like they ought to produce these flowers but, thus far at least, they are flowerless. Perhaps if I find some at the flower market...