Flower Flaunt on Friday - it's mid-Summer on this Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.

After the terrible events that have unfolded here in my home state of Queensland recently, it's a pleasant diversion to be focussing on what's blooming in my garden. 

As many of you already know, most of the blooms in my garden are on potted plants.  The garden beds here are totally dominated by palms, the old-fashioned red-flowering Hibiscus, the Giant Sword Fern and Duranta repens.  Whilst these plants certainly offer a lot in the way of terrific foliage, they don't really provide all that much variety when it comes to blooms.

So I started adding potted plants to both the Courtyard and Shadehouse Gardens in my effort to add colour other than green.

Here we see some of the potted plants out in the courtyard just as the 'wet' season began in early December.

After an unseasonably wet Spring in late 2010, they weren't doing too badly.  But as the 'wet' continued and worsened, with many, many gloomy days and lots of heavy rain over December into early January, most of my potted plants got very very leggy as they searched all over for some sunlight.  Sunshine has definitely been at a premium here in north-east Oz during this Summer.

Not only did these plants get scraggly, they started looking a little starved, which of course they were.  It's futile trying to keep up the regular feeding schedule during a wet season as the heavy rain simply leaches all the goodness out and it's not all that much fun standing out in driving rain with a watering can!

Added to all this, they had been attacked by the usual summertime visitors ... greedy gnawing grasshoppers.  These plants had what I refer to as 'the wet season woes'!  So, I spent some time over the weekend giving most of these plants a drastic trimming back, hence the lack of blooms in both the courtyard and shadehouse.

As a result, I had to look very carefully to find blooms elsewhere.   Out I went with camera in hand, during some breaks in the showers of rain today, to see what I could find in some of the other spots around the property.

As expected, there were the usual year-round bloomers - Hibiscus, Russelia, Neomarica, Evolvulus, Ixoras, Pentas. Such stout sturdy plants.  Then there were the trusty wet season bloomers, the Mussaendas and Salvias.

One thoroughly unexpected find were the two tiny Azalea blooms ... can't explain it!  They're slightly confused obviously, thinking it's still Spring.

The Mandevilla which really suffered from something during last year ... still haven't worked out what ... has recovered well finally and showing off some flowers.

Then there is the magnificent Tricyrtis x Empress - the Empress Toad Lily.  I had almost forgotten about this beauty as the Giant Sword Fern has all but taken over in the Shadehouse Garden and the potted Empress was languishing in a corner.  After the big clean-up out in the shadehouse, she has come back to life!

Here's what's going on in my garden today ... I did include some of the other sights out in the garden today.  See how many pesky grasshoppers you can spot!

I'm joining in Tootsies' meme Fertilizer Friday / Flaunt Your Flowers today with this video clip!  Make sure you go on over to Tootsie's blog and have a look at what's blooming in other gardens around the world as well.

I'm participating in the Today's Flowers meme and encourage you to pop over the see some outstanding flowers.

I'm joining the Blooming Friday meme and ...

... I'm also joining in Carol's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - GBBD meme.  There will be many gardeners posting about just what's going on in their gardens right now in mid-January, so make sure your visit and find out!