Friday has again come around really quickly, which means that work is busy and can’t be too bad at the moment. This is definitely a blessing it has been tough going relatively recently. As always, here are my favourite plants of the week.

This photo has to be my photo of the week. On these lovely Raphiolepis flowers, which I love anyway, is a bee that was loving life on this shrub in the sunshine.

This may bush is also looking delightful today. Unfortunately, there are no bees about but you can just enjoy the flowers for their own sake.

This has to be one of the toughest shrubs that I come across on a fairly regular basis. Callistemon ‘Little John’ is a dwarf cultivar often planted in traffic islands and needs little attention at all-apart from enjoying the bright red flowers!

Salvia shrubs can be really pretty, like this one with its dark green-purple leaves and pale pink flowers. To be honest, I’m not sure you can dislike this particular salvia, although I don’t know which particular one it is!

Birds of paradise flowers produce a fabulous flower, both in terms of colour and the distinctive shape of them. I love the showy nature of these flowers that birds love collecting the nectar from. They are also tough plants here in Sydney-they just need dead leaves and flowers removing as required.

This pretty flower is an individual flower that came off the tall spike of a gymea lily, a uniquely Australian oddity that I enjoy when flowering. They remind me of my son who (in an effort to get some sort of reaction) likes to inform me that I’m scared of these plants. I’m not, but because of this interaction, they make me smile.

Firecracker plant is my final plant for the day. It is a rather scruffy plant in a way, but I do like it for that. I also enjoy the contrast between the green leaves and red flowers.

That’s all for today, but I’ll have updates on my garden over the weekend.