The Chaste tree and other wonderful flowers in my yard

Here it is, barely the crack of dawn and
I've been meandering around my yard appreciating all the beautiful flowers. I have a wonderful bush/tree growing in my back yard. It's planted so you can see it from our breakfast table on the far side of the pool. It's in its full glory right now. I only planted it 2 springs ago, it was a distressed specimen I got from the nursery for $12. I trimmed off all the dead parts and planted it, now it probably reaches 10 feet tall. It's called a chaste tree, (Vitex agnus-castus). The story goes that the peppercorn seeds it produces were used to keep monk's chaste. So this morning as a passing thought, I was curious and looked it up on Google. It has a Mediterranean origin. This amazing plant was mentioned far back by ancient Greeks and many other cultures. The web site I found mentions the name in 32 languages, from Albanian to Turkish. It was used as a weak pepper substitute though not much in demand nowadays. Anyway, I just wanted to share my beautiful plant with you.

This amazing flower is from the passion vine. I saw one at a Master Gardener friend's house a few years back and really liked it. Some plants need to be right in your face so you can appreciate their complexity. So I planted one right by my front door on a trellis I built of redwood.

I found this plant, an angel wing primrose, on a plant salvage about 10 years ago. The BLM or Bureau of Land Management allows you to harvest plants on land that will be developed for public purposes, like a new road being built. We were new to Nevada and decided this would be an interesting thing to do. At the time, we knew very little about desert plants. This was a little rosette in the ground. I thought it was cute. I had no idea that it was a fragrant, night blooming plant. My original thought was if it was invasive, I could kill it. Of course, this isn't the original, but one of it's many offspring. They volunteer around the yard, something I love.

One more little gem is called Mexican Hat, I took a seed head from a garden I visited. I promised to give it a good home. My garden is never static, it should always be changing and renewing itself, that's what I love about gardens.
Last but not least is the Red Bird of Paradise. As you can imagine, this is a popular plant. These are the first blossoms of the year in my yard.