Purple Balloon Flowers June 2013

It is a good year for the balloon flower plant. The plant is producing a lot of nice purple balloon flowers this season. Very nice!

Flower of the Billbergia nutans

Billbergia nutans or "Queen Tears" plant with a flower that is a rich array of colors.

Purple Balloon Flowers

Amaryllis/Hippeastrum In Full Bloom

The Amaryllis or Hippeastrum is really starting to bloom. It now has 3 of its 4 blooms open. Since this plant seems to bloom each year about this time I decided to try out the time lapsed photo mode on the Canon Powershot Pro1.

It is a nice feature that I did not quite understand when photographing the night blooming cactus. The first bloom I took pictures of every 15 minutes but made the error when setting up the flower in the frame to allowing open area for the flower to expand. So the flower which seems to move about 2 cm an hour, gradually expanded out of the frame over 12 hours.

The next bloom I left room for the expansion in the frame and let the camera shoot for 20 hours. I want to stitch the images into a fast movie but since they are all in RAW format it will take a while to convert.

The photos here show two of the full bloom at night and in the day time. Also a macro shot of one of the petals.

More Flowers from the Sidewalk Garden

Here are some more flowers after a rain shower. The purple balloon flower is back with its pentagon looking pod. The ballon flower is also known as the Chinese Bellflower or Platycodon grandiflorus.

The neat pentagon shaped flower pod that has a balloon look to it.

Here is a pink hydrangea which I think signifies the soil is base (pH over 7) while blue ones have pH before 6 with acidic soil.

These yellow flowers belong to the common mullein (Verbascum thapsus). The stalks can get 7 feet tall and the leaves grow out radially that feel felt like.
Another picture of a balloon flower.