This week I have found many new and old visitors alike taking a flutter or a crawl down the winding decomposed granite pathways in the Patch, and I am not referring to the after-effects of ingesting Leah’s sangria, though I could be.

There are hunters and predators lurking everywhere, under and above leaves, in the sky and on the ground,

Hard to spot hunters hunting down the tastiest foliage, like this…

Texas Spotted Range Grasshopper,

Psoloessa texana

you have to look really hard to spot this grasshopper, even it’s eyeballs are camouflaged!  I only ever witness this beast if I happen to disturb one, then I have to follow the enormous jump and endure the subsequent heat and mosquito ravaged hunt in a general vicinity to find it again. They have remarkable colored “flashes” on their legs, that I have still yet to capture on camera. The wings look exactly like leaf skeletons.

“Croak…I love grasshoppers…burp!”

The Gulf Coast toads have been busy in my feeder stock-tank the last few weeks…

…laying strings and floating mountains of toad spawn.  I always keep a close eye on the amount of toad spawn in my above ground stock tank pond after my “Primordial Soup” escapade a couple of years back. I still harbor night terrors from that episode and the flatulent machine I rented that was supposed to help alleviate the situation:

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2008/08/primordial-soup/

And look…

A baby Jewels of Opar! (at least I think it is). Unfortunately it chose a really bad spot to germinate on one of my pathways, I will relocate it when it gets bigger. Considering how many seeds this plant sent out last year I have only seen three new plants so far and they are in wildly different areas of the Patch!

“All this talk of things eating things has made me hungry!”

(Watermelon courtesy of Pam at digging: http://www.penick.net/digging/). I think we can safely say this melon was a total hit with this “Harry” Pam! Needless to say a whole bunch of seeds came spluttering my way seconds after the shutter closed.

This one goes out to you…

“…your the Pam, your the Pam!” :-)

More tiny eggs are turning up on my Mexican lime tree that, incidentally is making a valiant growth effort after I had to take the wood-cutter’s axe to it after the winter freezes. The Giant Swallowtail butterflies swarm citrus trees, giving them their other common name: “Orange Dogs”. The larvae are bird dropping mimics, and retain this nasty presentation into maturity. Because of their camouflage, they can often be found feeding right out in the open on their host plants. I have a bunch of their larvae at various stages of excremental development…

Papilio cresphontes larva

Yes, not the most aesthetically pleasing of creatures I agree, but a very effective deterrent for any would-be predators, after all who would want to eat ….?

I bet Andrew would also love to get his chops into a few of these brightly colored caterpillars lined up on a skewer!  This is the strangely named Io moth caterpillar, I found it lurking in leaves under my ivy.

Automeris io

The feet are very animated.

The larvae start off orange and as they develop turn bright green. The caterpillars are covered in black-tipped spines that cause a lot of pain if touched. It is reported that the Naboo use these spines as poisoned blow-darts on occasion, but that is another story.  The spines have a poison that is released with the slightest touch. The green caterpillars have two lateral stripes, the upper one being red and the lower one white. When the caterpillars are ready, they spin a flimsy, cocoon made from a dark, coarse silk. Some larvae will crawl to the base of a tree and make their cocoons amongst leaf litter on the ground, while others will use living leaves to wrap their cocoons with. The leaves will turn brown and fall to the ground during autumn, taking the cocoons with them. Look at what they turn into!

Here are the adult moths female top, male below. (picture courtesy of Wikipedia).

Amazing looking nocturnal moths!

Equally amazing are the

Gulf Fritillary or Passion Butterflies that are now showing up in the Patch

Agraulis vanillae

It is orange with black markings on the tops of the wings. Underneath it has silvery white spots. This one being a lighter orange is a female.  I love the contrast topside to underside of these birds, they look like totally different butterflies. Plant a passionflower and watch them turn up!

Incredible coloration.

The Texas Spiny Lizard

Sceloporus olivaceus

is a common resident of most of Texas. It spends a great deal of time on fence posts and in trees like this one in my post oak, searching for food, but can be encountered on rocks or on the ground. This spiny lizard can grow to almost 1 foot in length!

Picture from Wikipedia: pretty fancy!

Colors and patterns typically serve to be adequate camouflage against the bark of trees in its chosen habitat.  Their scales have a distinctly spiny texture to them, and their long toes and sharp claws are suited to climbing.  I have seen more of these spiny lizards this year then I have ever seen before, not sure why?

Unlike anoles who appear to enjoy getting their faces into the camera, these spiny lizards are really easily spooked and extremely fast.  This one “galloped” away and up into my post oak before I could say…

“My beans are finally at the top of the poles, and flowering!”…Or…

“Lots of new growth on my purple hearts and fountain grass!”

The Patch is entering the dog days of summer once again,

my fingers are crossed for a more lenient one then last year.

For now the sun is setting in the Patch so I bid you a warm Walton’s goodnight.

“Night Jim Draco Bob, night Pam, night Jenny(s) (RR the kids loved doing the wooden puzzles), night Les, night Daphne, night Germi (it was great to meet you), night Linda, night Meredith, night Texas Deb, night Diana, night Laura, night Cheryl, night Katina, night Ellie…etc,etc.

Stay Tuned for:

“Shaken not Stirred”

All material © 2010 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late  (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

Go England!

Check out the Patch write up at: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/greengarden/award_sanbernard.htm

Remember a few posts back that I had been seeing a few small caves around the Patch?

Well today we noticed this particularly deep hole, a hole that was not there yesterday…I dropped a piece of decomposed granite into it, there was a delay, then I heard a splash as the rock hit water! I immediately backed away from the pot-hole. This warranted further investigation. The eldest hobbit was straight onto this.

“Flashlight!”

She hunkered down to the sink-hole with a flashlight, then remembered that she had a better tool for the job…

…a tiny flashlight.

“We’re going in!”

We harnessed up and propelled ourselves into the dark pit, switching on our flashlights as we descended.

After landing in some shallow water at the base of the cavern, we turned around and our flashlights illuminated what had to be an ancient Naboo temple at the far end of the cavern.

“Fascinating ESP, it looks exactly like giant timber bamboo roots”.

Thanks for that Spock!

The organ-pipe architecture was staggering and housed small openings which I surmised were openings into the Naboo living quarters, a sort of cliff dwelling existence?

We also noticed a lot of snail shells scattered along the dank edge of the cave, perhaps the tribe is partial to escargot ?

I was pondering this ridiculous culinary possibility, when a horrendous piercing scream filled the cavern, we heard the crunching of large footsteps on snails… and they were drawing closer.

We glanced at each other then started to run.  We ran through some ancient reeds,

…past sharp, man-eating plants,

that would close in on themselves as we ran by.

We finally made it back to where our ropes were hanging from the cave entrance. Naturally my flashlight was dropped in typical Jurassic Patch fashion, just to build up some really irritating fake tension.  Half way up my rope I shone the beam back onto the cave floor…

and was shocked to see a fifty foot anole staring back up at me, it let out one final deafening scream, it’s tongue trying to latch onto my ankle.

“Oh, like you have problems ESP?”

We scrambled out of the cave entrance, and pulled up our ropes…top-side at last.  I placed a Texas holey rock over the cave entrance and continued with my weeding, hoping to bump into the Naboo to ask them about the temple.

Moving a little more sanely on:

Oil on Canvas?

Brushfoots and Swallowtails have started to appear in the Patch this past week.

Vanessa cardui

(Painted Lady) …I think.

All of them made an immediate bee line for the mountain laurel blooms that have now started to decline.

Vanessa atalanta

Red Admiral

This Swallowtail was attracted to the verbena…

which has got enormous in my middle cactus and succulent bed.

My purple leaf sand cherry

“Prunus Cistena!”

just keeps on developing more and more fragrant flowers, the pale pink blooms with burgundy centers that pick up the foliage color is a knock-out this time of year, and it creates a great contrast with the emerging green plants, like inland sea oats.  A great drought tolerant shrub for Texas color.

“I like it, I like it”…and yes that is compost at the side of his mouth, he got into a bag when I was planting some more bamboo muhly in my hell strip.  I hate to think what he did with it.

My other hobbit patiently held her three beans (magic beans) in a plastic egg while I constructed a grow teepee for them out of bamboo.  A bean was planted at the base of each pole. She administered the beans into the troweled-out holes like a pharmacist.  Now the painful wait for the beanstalk to grow.

She got her beans at the East Austin Garden Fair: “A Passion for Plants.” Unfortunately the weather made things feel like the event was being held in the Scottish Highlands rather then Central Texas, but we all had a great time.  I will be putting this event on our calender for future years.

“Ach! ye canny say that, its no like the highlands at a’, I canna believe ye would say such a….”

Oh shut your cake-hole William!

We walked away from the event with a bunch of freebies, frozen mouths and some great planting information.  I even got to watch a live south American cockroach crawl up it’s handlers sleeve to escape the cold…Brrrr in more ways then one! (Neck twinge only, for some odd reason).

One of my Texas Sages has suddenly acquired a lot of these nasty olive chappies.

Luckily there were also a whole load of ladybugs chomping (I hope on them) as fast as they could.  May your jaws ache with the feast, my dotted allies.

Other Springing things in the Patch this week.

Glossy foliage is emerging on my holly fern, all it needs is some sushi served on it’s leaves.

The first water lily of the year has surfaced.

This daisy never gets on my four nerves.

“Oh Ha ha ha ha ha! Hey Joe? We got a wise-guy blogging over here.”

The first amaranth is rising out of the decomposed granite…

as is the Hoja Santa, returning from the dead.

Ice plant wasting no time throwing in some shiny spring color.

Feather Grass and an illuminated loquat manuscript providing some textural contrast.

Another sinkhole, this one was full of aptly named…stonecrop.

Is that a baby grasshopper on this dwarf conifer?  What IS that?.  Talking of dwarf conifers how about this:

Adrian Bloom’s garden, Foggy Bottom, Bressingham, Norfolk, England, 1987-89

“I have never seen anything like it, so many conifers in one garden”.

Finally:

“I cannot believe you did not include me anywhere in this Jurassic post ESP?”

Sorry Jeff, …no flies!

Stay Tuned for:

“Bread Rock”

All material © 2010 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by  late  (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

I must say to all the Austin bloggers who attended the event on Sunday, a big thank you, and again to Pam for organizing it, and your card!

We had a really fun time at the patch, so much so, we did not get round to taking a single photo of the shindig! not one!  But I have had a lot of entertainment this week, looking at the pictures ever one else has snapped, and hearing all your personal accounts, and comments about both our gardens, on your blogs.

Oh and Annie, I saw your comment on Pam’s blog:

The remainder of the agave stalk only just
fit in here, if you catch my drift!

I will have to copy a few of your pictures taken on this day and place
them in my scrapbook for future reminiscing, if no one minds!

I must admit the “quickening” to the Austin ”gathering” was
quite an intense time for me. I decided at the last minute to
do some intensive aesthetic fixes, mostly to my moonscape.
It just looked terrible! shards of glass here and there, a lot here,
and even more over there!

Ah Yesh! The Easht-shide-Patch
has enough glass shards
in there to kill even
us immortals.

It was the eleventh hour, no time for a “Custom Stone” delivery.
I rushed to H/Depot, which to my luck was having a moving sale,
and bought a brand new, plastic handled shovel, (I was not about to start shoveling gravel with my “half shovel”) .
My new shovel is heavier than my last one but I like that, and anyway, I was just looking for one that would not try to kill me like the last one did, using the extraction of a pampas grass as an excuse.


Here is the filled in moonscape, the gravel will form the base of my drainage for this future lavender bed. More on this experimental bed later.

“So much gravel he has, the force is strong in this bed, but lavender?
So brash is he.”

The transition of the Mexican bush sage into the lavender bed will happen via this new planting of various salvias. I am not sure how this will work aesthetically …the future will tell.


I caught this chap after our recent rains on our front stained concrete porch…I really tried to link to “the orb” song:
“The slug dub” (even though it is a snail)  but with zero success. Great album though if you like ambient, atmospheric British accents talking about slugs and snails! you can get it on I -Tunes, the album is called “Orbus Terrarum,” it is a few years old but still a total classic.

Wet Hoja Santa, and giant timber bamboo. This is one of the few plants in my yard that we inherited. This plant always has done so well in this spot. Give it decent moisture and rich soil  (just like the timber bamboo) …they both seem pretty happy in this bed.

Ahh, rain in the Lone Star State!

This downspout catches rain into a stock tank that I use for
manual watering, I usually incorporate fish emulsion from the
natural gardener into my watering regimen from this tank. The plants,
especially the newly planted ones seem to thrive on this.

On the subject of thriving, this Swallow Tail was laying some serious eggs on one of my fall asters, at least I hope that was what it was doing.

I was lucky to snap this caterpillar at a recent visit to the natural gardener. I would love an identification. The horns on this one were huge. I have never seen this variety on the east-side of Austin. Has anyone else?

Amazing dark color and amazing contrasting orange spots! It looks totally toxic, so I ate this one, and this is what happened to me:

I felt so bad.

Monarch Butterfly – Danaus plexippus

The Monarch is easily North America’s best recognized butterfly. Common throughout the U.S. and southern Canada, the Monarch is found just about everywhere there are open, sunny areas. The Monarch’s caterpillars feed almost exclusively on milkweed plants which contain toxins that render both the larva and adult butterflies extremely distasteful to predators.
Annually, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies from the eastern U.S. and Canada migrate to central Mexico – a trip of as much as 2,000 miles. There, they overwinter in protected areas in the mountains in a state of diapause, living off fat reserves much the same way hibernating mammals do. This one was a totally trusting – It is funny how some species of butterflies (and dragonflies, come to think of it) are really shy and spooky and some just simply seem not to really care.

Amazing display of fall aster at the Natural Gardener.

Staying with purple, this potato vine vein caught my attention with the sun shining behind it.

A new water feature, on top of a new hill. The glass chunk
really catches the westerly setting sun… it illuminates like a coal ember.

Amaranth in full flight.
Amaranth has an important future in U.S. agriculture. It is particularly well suited to the dry areas of the Western United States. Its outstanding nutritional qualities make it appealing to an increasingly health conscious American public. Processors could improve the taste of amaranth products by following the indigenous practice of popping the seeds prior to processing. Amaranth is a new crop with enormous potential for U.S. as well as Third World agriculture.

Giant elephant ear. This bulb got enormous last year due to the copious amounts of rain at regular intervals. Even with the addition of good, slow, deep soakings from the hose this year, it just never responded in quite the same way… just proves that there is no substitute for rain!

Shell Ginger at it’s fall peak. I love the jungle aesthetic of this plant.

Jane, your eyes remind me of shell ginger…so cool
and exotic.
Oh Tarzan, your eyes remind me of

Beady little ornamental peppers?

Tarzan loves ornamental peppers.

I  do as well Tarzan.

Once again, a big thank you Austin bloggers for a truly memorable day, and I look forward to planting all of your seedlings and transplants.


Stayed tuned for:

A Scottish haunting: “Outerlands”.

All material © 2008 for east_side_patch. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.