Color My World -- Orange

When you live in South Florida, you realize that we have a completely different growing season and so many different types of tropical plants and trees that you don't see anywhere else. For example, we grow backyard vegetable gardens from October through May. It's just too hot to grow many vegetables in the summer. We do have summer fruit, like mangoes, which is very exciting. I make a mean mango sorbet. I'll show you some mangoes when they come out in July.

But for the spring, we have these amazing blooming trees. A spectacular tree that is found all over South Florida is the Royal Poinciana. It blooms around Memorial Day every year, and gets absolutely covered with bright orange flowers. They can get 30 feet around, so you can see them dotting neighborhoods from a great distance. My neighbor planted one just 3 years ago, and it's already 20 feet high. It bloomed very little this year, but give it another year or so and it will be covered. I took a drive around my neighborhood and caught a couple in bloom.

This tree is in full bloom.


This tree is even bigger, and some of it is done blooming. The orange flowers drop off after a week or so and are replaced with lush, green leaves.


Here's a closeup of the flowers.


The bursts of orange all over town inspired me to see what I have that's orange around my house. I admit, I'm a blue girl, so I don't decorate with orange a lot. I did come up with a few things.

A nice variegated candle.


A beautiful sari/tablecloth that came from Hawaii.


A painting I bought from an artist who was displaying his work at the Juno Beach art show, Art By the Sea. He's originally from Hawaii, and we had a nice conversation about mutual artists we know.


Here's a necklace I made specifically to match this dress. I was wearing black shoes and wanted to pull some black into the necklace.


I searched through my beads and found a few more orange beads in my stash.


And finally, here's a blouse I like to wear. It encompasses so many bright colors, and is a good example of how I like to dress. Unfortunately, I have to iron it, which means I only wear it about once every 4 months. I hate to iron.