Waiting for us ...

I'd have hated to miss this altogether. For once, the blooms in this blip are in my own garden, and I've come home from my holidays just in time to catch them. I'm too busy with homecoming stuff to visit Benmore Gardens to see their azeleas, but this one of ours and the smaller pink one beside it are enough to go on with just now. 

The second of my extra photos is of the Chilean Lantern Tree that we had savagely pruned a couple of years ago. Its proper name is Crinodendron hookerianum, and its even more proper name Tricuspidaria lanceolata. It is an evergreen tree in the family Elaeocarpaceae. It is endemic to Chile, where it occurs from Cautin to Palena. It grows near streams and in very humid and shady places, according to Wikipedia. It certainly flourishes in our shaded and often damp front garden; it almost died in the winter of 1982 and has now become a large tree that threatens to cut all light from our front room - hence the periodic savagery. I see it all over this corner of Argyll.

I have always called it Tricuspidaria.