Flower Flaunt on Friday/Mosaic Monday - in the midst of cyclone season!

Yes I know I'm late, I'm late for this very important date ... again! ... but I really do have a good excuse!  It's been a terribly hectic time at work preparing my room for the school year.  Even though the students have already returned, my new room was still in the throes of re-construction.  It's been quite an effort in diplomacy and patience trying to set up with workmen in the room and plans being changed almost every second day!

So it's been a full week!  Not only that, but a cyclone is now bearing down on my particular stretch of the Queensland coast.  It's due to hit our region sometime on Monday, so hubbie and I have been doing little bits here and there after work to prepare for that as well!

Now to what's flowering.  Well after the rather intense 'wet' season we've already had, the flowering potted plants in both the shadehouse and courtyard gardens have all been trimmed back severely.  Most are far from being in their best form, but there are small splashes of colour.

In the courtyard garden I found the orange of Crossandra infundibuliformis and Ixora 'Twilight Glow',

the soft purples of Streptocarpus caulescens, Viola hederacea and Torenia,

and just a couple of brilliant white flashes from Tabernaemontana corymbosa, Wrightia antidysenterica and Argyranthemum frutescens.

In the shadehouse garden, there's the pinks of my Curcuma australasica and Dragonwing Begonias.

I then took a walk around the outdoor garden beds and found just a couple of sprays of blooms on two of the tallest trees, the Citharexylum spinosum and Tabebuia pallida.

There's an entire bed of Vinca major that's popped up over the 'wet' season.  This plant is considered a weed in my region and I'm forever pulling it out!  I shall wait until the end of this 'wet' before pulling out all these.

I've also found lots of little Cockscomb Celosia plants popping up in one of the downstairs garden beds.  There was originally two large trays of these on the outdoor stairway and the seeds have obviously been blown on the breeze to a nearby bed.

Both my Mussanedas are still in full bloom.  They just power on through all the gloomy overcast, stinking hot and steamy, rainy days of our 'wet' season.

Of course, there's always lots of red in my garden from all the different varieties of red flowering Hibiscus ...

... and the Pentas lanceolata have returned from their rather drastic cutbacks earlier in our Summer.

Finally, there's a few bright bursts of gold around the garden from the Cassia fistula, the Neomarica, the dwarf Allamanda, the Glaphimia glauca ... and the many St. Andrew's Cross spiders that are hanging out in my garden right now.

I'm joining Tootsie's meme, Fertilizer / Flaunt Your Flowers Friday,so please visit to see what's blooming in other gardens.

I'm also joining Mary's meme (a little early, but I thought I should given that I'm not sure how things will be here on Monday as the cyclone draws nearer!).  Please do pop over to Little Red House and check out all the terrific mosaics for Mosaic Monday.