Little Dainty Flowers Valiantly Fighting Anger

A Hebe
Hebe

A Correa (I think), possibly 'Ivory Bells'?
Correa

A Cuphea 
Cuphea

And this one is...Cuphea micropetala?  Looking quite radiantly happy.
Unknown

Unknown


I'm pretty ticked off at the moment and am blogging to try to distract myself.   Yesterday afternoon in the mail I got a toll violation for the Bay Bridge in Oakland California, saying I had not paid a FasTrak toll for the Bay Bridge on December 31, 2011.  Except I (and my car and its license plates) were about 400 miles away at the time.  I was in the house, and my car (and its license plates) were in the garage.  And I have not been near the Oakland Bay Bridge since October of 2010 when we went to Napa, and we were not in that car!  I filled out the "no you made a mistake" part of the form and will mail it back today.  I'm upset--did someone counterfeit my license plates?  I'm upset.  Tiny dainty flowers ain't helping much at the moment. 

Well...maybe they are helping a little.  

Hebes don't grow that well here.  They like cool summers and hate hot Santa Ana winds with 90 F temperatures and 5% relative humidity.  The Hebe I photographed looked pretty excellent for a Southern California Hebe.  It's planted on the north side of a block wall (cooler conditions) with an adjacent lawn (higher humidity).  Pretty plants.  I've always liked them but in this neighborhood they either look like hell, or die rapidly.  


The Correa is more appropriate to our climate, being from southeastern Australia.  I liked the fuzzy grey-green leaves.  Plant looked great.  


The Cupheas looked excellent too.  Not my yard, not my little dainty flowers.   A neighbor's.  I realized admiring her plants that I don't have a huge collection of plants with little dainty flowers.  I go for the big and honking.  I guess I need to expand my horizons, my horizons which most certainly did not include the Bay Bridge FasTrak lane on New Year's Eve.  Grrrr!

Comments

  1. I was going to look up Hebe to see what growing conditions it likes, but you quashed my hopes later in the post. Why does it seem that some of the coolest, most desirable plants don't like heat or cold? Grrr.

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  2. Alan sometimes I suspect they do it to torment us. ;)

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  3. I remember Hebes in San Diego, but with so many desirable plants there, I forgot about it. 90 and 5% humidity...sounds nice right now where it's 45!

    And a ticket for some place you haven't been...something must have read wrong, or as you say!

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  4. Must have been your evil twin..car.

    ReplyDelete

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