Happy Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day!  This is one of my favorite meme’s.  I love participating each month and I always look forward to seeing what my fellow garden bloggers have blooming in their gardens.

On another note, I got it.  I thought I had escaped it completely.  With such beautiful spring weather, it is just incomprehensible to me that I succumbed to it – the flu.  Isn’t there a rule or law somewhere that states you can only be sick with the flu when it is cold and rainy outside?  Not when it is gorgeous and sunny outside.

Thankfully, I am feeling better and was able to go outside (in my pajamas) to take pictures for April’s GBBD.  The following flowering plants are in my backyard because I did not want to venture out in the front garden in my pajamas 😉

This is the first cluster of flowers this year on my Orange Jubilee (Tecoma x Orange Jubilee) shrub.  Since it is located up next to my house, it usually does not suffer frost damage in the winter.  Soon, the hummingbirds will be fighting over the blooms.

 Closely related to the Orange Jubilee, my Yellow Bells  (Tecoma stans stans) is located along the back wall of my garden.  It is covered in yellow flowers from April through November.

I am extra excited about this one because these are the first blooms on my Whirling Butterfly Bush (Gaura lindheimeri ‘Siskiyou Pink’).  We planted this back in March.

Okay, technically this Cat Claw Vine (Macfadyena unguis-cati) is not planted in my garden, but in my neighbor’s.  But, it is blooming in my garden, so that counts, doesn’t it? Cat Claw Vine does suffer frost damage in some locations in the winter, but quickly grows back. It can become invasive and so I would use caution when considering growing this vine.  I cut back the portion that hangs over my fence about twice a year when it gets too close to my shrubs.

Geraniums in our new vegetable garden.  This was recently moved from our Children’s Flower Garden as it was being deconstructed.

It is not very easy to see all of the yellow blooms that are covering both of my Mexican Bird-of-Paradise (Caesalpinia mexicana), but they are lovely just the same.  Although they are commonly grown as shrubs, they can also be trained as small trees as I have done here.  In our area, they bloom off and on all year.

I hope you enjoyed this brief visit to some of my flowering plants in the back garden.  Please visit May Dreams Gardens for a list of other garden bloggers who are participating in Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day.

Now I’m off to visit my fellow garden blogger’s gardens to see what they have blooming…..