Mystery Succulent Flower

I love a good mystery - don't you?

This little potted succulent was a leftover from the previous owner of the house. It's a little battler - it withers and shrinks and then comes back again, and has flowered each year with this bulbous purple lone flower.

To be honest it kind of freaks me out - once upon a time I worked on film about flesh eating vines, and they had waxy flowers that lured people to their death...(yah not exactly an award winner)... and I think it reminds me of them...

It also kind of reminds me of a banana flower - this one's on our tiny banana tree near the chicken coop - here's hoping that the bananas get a little bigger.

Anyway - my google searches haven't come up with anything - so if you know what my mystery succulent is please let me know!

Going Bananas for Spring

Look at what I spotted peeking out from under a banana leaf on the weekend..

Finally a banana flower! It's been about 20 months since we feasted on our last lot of bananas - that tree has since come down and this is the sucker that's popped up to take it's place. It's pretty slow progress - at this rate I won't be profiting from the high banana prices any time soon..

These are some other flowers I'm excited to see - it's the solanum potato vine that we've grown over the chicken run. It's been a vigorous grower and has done a good job covering the ugly steel mesh in a relatively short time, but it's never flowered! I've always wondered what it's lacking and why it wasn't flowering - I guess it was just biding it's time and maybe waiting for spring.