Simply Delightful

The actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not
here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant
geography: they are here first of all for DELIGHT.
-   John Ruskin (http://www.gardendigest.com/flowers.htm)

Look at this hornet kissing the flower, sipping its nectar.

Looks like a lovely bridal bouquet at macro.

Looks like a bottlebrush, too.

The buds soon to bloom

It's a shrub.

Anyone knows its name? Is it another family of bottlebrush?

This is the most common weeping bottlebrush flower from a tree, not a shrub. 

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Lovely Mickey

 

Mickey Mouse Plant fruit's red sepals (not its flower as commonly mistaken) and mature seeds that look like eyes - all these explain why it is named Mickey Mouse. Its seeds if not yet mature are green.

Here's Mickey Mouse's flower. Do you notice the yellow green sepals just below the yellow petals? They will soon turn into red as shown in the photo above and below. This garden shrub grows about 9 feet tall. It is known to have originated from South Africa.

 

Three-eyed Mickey 

All things bright and beautiful 

All creatures great and small
    All things wise and wonderful
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens...
God made their glowing colors...
-Cecil Frances Alexander

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Nature speaks of Valentine's, too!

I haven't taken Valentine's stuffs at department stores for Ruby Tuesday so I'm sharing one of nature's Valentine's symbols - heart-shaped inverted banana blossom (called banana heart, thanks to Anni).

Here are some great Valentine's gifts- a red Bromeliad

and red Euphorbia.

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