June flowers in red and yellow

Starting last Christmas, around the 25th, my camera and I stroll thru the garden to see what is in bloom this month. Not an exhaustive archive, nor when did it open. Just the OTT, in your face impression. Right now it is red flowers. And yellow flowers. Or red AND yellow flowers for a change? June, winter, is our garden at its most flamboyant and exuberant. Everything that is green is growing. With a lush ankle deep layer of Oxalis 'three-leafed-clover' everywhere it can be.

The OTT prize goes to the Japanese flowering quince we inherited.

Fever tree, umbrella thorn, mimosa, Port Jackson

Edited October 2014 the fever tree has been renamed Vachellia xanthophloea

The umbrella thorn, Acacia tortilis, with its flat top is so much the epitome of Africa that FNB, First National Bank, has used the silhouette for its logo.

We have planted fever-trees, Acacia xanthophloea, in our garden. The Ungardener for its thorns to discourage climbing over the wall. I choose it for that shimmering, luminous, lime green bark. An unlikely, unreal colour, like a mirage. Just briefly while deciduous, long enough to worry the Ungardener, the bark is spectacular. The thorns are long and vicious, to be observed from a respectful reverent and cautious distance, as with the Agave. In fact the thorns are so long and sharp, that they were used as sewing needles by early settlers.