Poppies are popping at the front of the patch.

Some are so dense I have had to thin them out to allow light to reach my Gaura lindheimeri (whirling butterfly) plants, that were in danger of being engulfed by the waxy red explosion.

Ripping at the seams!

“The poppies are really putting on a good show this year, look Ben.”

“Don’t you think I can see them with these eyes of mine Penelope?”

Everything is mounding up pretty well in the ESPatch this spring…the burgundy cannas are on the move and the Mexican feather grass is already in its prime, they are already full of seed pinnacles…

“Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, But grass is immortal.” – John J. Ingalls

…they looked spectacular the other day with the wind ripping through them,

and then the setting sun igniting them.

The spring stragglers are my Barbados cherry that is slowly greening up (center left) and my Mexican lime tree that so far only has two small green sprigs on it’s lower trunk.

My artemisia is also filling in quite nicely, that is the greener variegated variety (front right) that I am keeping a close eye on…it has spread significantly since I first planted it, but for now I will let it run wild up the slope.

“We’ll build dwarf palmetto spears, twice the length of a Naboo man…Hold, Hold, Here they come lads, Hold, HOLD, Here come the snails, HOLD.”

“Don’t be ridiculous William”.

I do not think I have ever seen so many snails in the ESP!

The inland sea oats have risen at an alarming rate…

…I have been spreading my sea oats all around the patch for a number of years now.

Is he serious Barb…Nicky…Margene?

While we are on the topic…

When I opened my compost bin today I was emphatically greeted by a cloud of these, they were tiny, in fact when I first leaned in to take a look I thought it was only one insect.  I was shocked to find these “push-me-pull-you” escapades going on with almost all of them…soldier flies gone wild!

Hermetia illucens Linnaeus

Black soldier fly

Moving on…

Why the faces?

Well, I was weeding with my youngest hobbit, who has a hard time discerning what is a plant and what is a weed, when I glanced over and saw this little morsel of fun…

Oh yes, I had to do it, I don’t know why, I never seem to learn, a word of advice…do not prod the unknown!  From a distance it looked like it had a “shell” of sorts on the outside, but oh-no how wrong I was.  My finger sunk into the martian spore like it was a marshmallow…shocked I retracted my finger (which now had a glob of the martian-mallow stuck to the end of it)…and yes, you all know what was to happen next.

“No don’t do it, don’t even think about it!”

Ahh, but I was about to, and I did, and I immediately regretted it, yes, as if my last post was a prequel to my current predicament, I made a really bad choice and smelled my own finger. Oh like you wouldn’t!  Oh you wouldn’t?

From my kneeling position my body went into an irreversible backward arc.

I narrowly avoided taking my hobbit along with me in the recoil.

My over the top reaction naturally captured his full attention, he loved it.  I ewwed, he ewwed, the adjacent Botox lady ewwed,

Photo from: “The Pygmies Plight”, Smithsonian.

And a Naboo member prodded the spore with a rather small stick.

He thought the stinky martian-mallow was the best and hunkered down over it for a front row seat waiting to see what would happen next.  And apparently he wasn’t disappointed.

He let out a fit of squeals and giggles as I “smeared” the spore like rotten margarine with a piece of pine-bark.

The smell?…well look at this thing, I will spare you a detailed graphic description.

Something a little more refreshing to cleanse the pallet…

Santolina chamaecyparissus

A small flowering plant native to the Mediterranean area (flowers are yellow and daisy like), santolina and artemesia are two silver plants that hold up well in our Texas summers, though in my experience santolina is just a little more fickle. I still have to have it dotted around. Unlike artemesia it grows very slowly, at least it does in the Patch. How does it grow for you?

Ivy thicket, pruned up agave and an attractive hose!  I am trying to establish three more ivy beds like this under the deep shade of my large Post Oak tree, it will take a few more years.

This Threadleaf ragwort or (and I hope I have this right)…

Senecio flaccidus

is a native of the southwestern great plains of North America, and a member of the daisy family.  I have three of these and they all look like this right now, a great sprawling plant when planted up against boulders.  It has a faint copper canyon daisy aroma.

Stay Tuned for:

“Lady-bug-Gaga”

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

Gross Post Alert!…Gross Post Alert!

The stench inside this cavern I cannot put into words, for fear of involuntary retching over my laptop keyboard once again just remembering it (mops side of mouth with Kleenex). It really was the most diabolical combination of fermented sweet and sour, and I am not talking about a kimchee – esque aroma, (which I love) oh no! Let me try and explain it, just to get you in the appropriate gag arena: Imagine a sickly sweet pumpkin pudding aroma, combined simply with fizzing rotten chicken (description courtesy of my oldest hobbit, minus the fizzing), it also had the texture of moist bread! (Burp… starts to look around worried).

This nasty cavern, (caverns being a popular post-topic recently in the Patch), was created as I started to examine this thing of immaculate beauty…

My largest

Colocasia

or giant elephant ear. Granted it is looking more like the painful stump of an elephant’s foot right now, but not for long, not for long at all!

I have left this tuber in the ground for the past four years, no problem, but this year’s prolonged cold winter temperatures had apparently taken their squishy toll. I prodded it, my hobbits prodded it, it started to ooze flesh, this could not be good. Then we all prodded it some more. Remember the infamous scene in poltergeist when the paranormal investigator started to touch his face, then proceeded to dig in his fingers and pull off his face?

Well that’s how we got started with this Taro…A prod led to a poke that led to a gouge that…

led to a push…

That led to the Taro finally “giving way” in a scene reminiscent of the horrible resuscitation scene from “The Thing”.

I think we all remember what disgusting “thing” happens next! I digress. When the head of the taro rolled back everyone recoiled and “ewwed” simultaneously, turning our faces away from the smell that hit us like a tsunami of flatulence. A stink horn is a terrible thing (right G?) http://thegerminatrix.com/?p=637 but this rank atrocity came pretty close as far as tickling ones stomach release valve.

“It’s just a rotten Taro ESP, nothing to be scared about”.

If you say so scary Kane! Brrrr

A couple of hours after the decapitation, I reluctantly revisited the carnage and found these tiny iridescent

Dolichopus

flies having a great time, their wings flicking back and forth in sick excitement.

These tiny, tiny flies are really interesting visually, looking like molten metal, their segmented bodies are really quite amazing. This one is about to make a left turn apparently.

Enough nastiness…

What!

Okay I promise that is it on the gross front…

Today was the day to move a rather large rock, a rock that has stayed where it fell from a truck that delivered a large delivery of decomposed granite some time ago.

The rock was wiggled and pried, rotated and shuffled down the slope until it came to rest and leveled in a more appropriate location…Thanks Bob at Draco! http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/ (and “PP” for the pry-bar and strategic leveling).

…right in front of my beautiful gas meter. While I was messing around in this part of the Patch I decided to relocate a plant or twelve, the agave and agave parryi var. truncata all coming from this container:

None of these plants were doing particularly well, buried in the shade of the vines that are slowly coming back into the land of the living.

This area took a real beating when the hole where the Tahoe hit http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/09/dude-wheres-my-car/ was being repaired, it received a lot of foot traffic and compaction as the house was repaired and repainted. Here it is the area planted up, the bed also has Mexican bush sage pushing through that will soften the scene and provide good contrast with the agave’s as they mature. The two silver Agave , known as Parry’s agave or mescal agave, are slow-growing agave’s native to Mexico (Sonora), hopefully these will reach their full potential in their new, more sun-loving home.

An old ceder carcass is added for a “Waltons” moment.

Now to wait for the scene to fill-in. There is also a line of tiny transplanted feather grasses in front of the moss boulders, well it wouldn’t be the Patch without them after all!

While all this transplanting and rock shuffling was going on, my Hobbits were being way..way too quite…

They had found my last trowel, (my favorite trowel has been missing for the last couple of weeks), I surmise that somehow it has found it’s way to “Davy Jones’ Locker“ at the bottom of my stock tank fish-pond. Mmm…Now I wonder who would do such a thing?

Apparently the hole was to house a pill bug and this snail, a few leaves were thrown in then the hole back filled.

The raggedy pram makes it into yet another shot. After the hole was filled in, my oldest hobbit went to the back garden to check on her new container garden that she has taken over as manager…

…and things seem to be growing very well. This is all hers!

Moving on…

Snail, cactus and verbena…

Here is the same purple verbena in full flight…

attracting once again the zombie / Thestral eyes of this swallowtail butterfly.

“I see the swallowtail too Harry”

Looking like a glittering harlequin’s hat, the blooms on this ghost plant are really quite involved… when you get up close.

This paper wasp is looking pretty sharp, color coordinated on the blooms of this gopher plant…

and my Mexican lime lives, it lives I tell you! This is the first bit of green it has developed at the base of the trunk. I knew she would pull through!

Tiny seed pods are now replacing the fading blooms of the mountain laurels.

The ESP is jumping further out of winter everyday, the survival of my Mexican lime tree and my Barbados cherry has made my week, even both of my dwarf bottle-brushes are steaming back to life. Although spring usually lasts a matter of hours in Central Texas, I plan to make the most of it…an iced turban will be in my future soon enough after all!

That little sotol in the middle of my circular bed is finally starting to develop a presence!

And finally:

I told you I was not finished with these four “nervous” daisies quite yet.

Inspirational Images of the week:

Anybody visiting Zilker Gardens in Austin last weekend for the plant festival, probably noticed this crazy Texas red bud specimen…

MacCrimmon’s Lament [Song]…Mac Umber

Stay Tuned for:

“If you Mock Orange Me, I’ll Satsum ya!”

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

The circular bed next to my back deck has had many incarnations, it is a focal point that anchors the back patio area and through its circular form, has dictated the design of the pathways to the rest of the yard. Here are a few of its schizophrenic personalities over the last few years:

Sedums and a lone bagpiper                              and a rather ugly combination of everything!

A tropical look and a …………………………………………………………….. Fire Pit? As you can see I widened the path on the right hand side to create a better flow around the bed. This picture was taken this last Winter, you can see the “bare bones” structure of the hardscaping. Note the absence of the nasty tunnel on the left,
and how much more open the view looks!

This spring I thought I would try something a little more cohesive:  “A Microcosmic Garden”, I thought to myself – a miniature of my cactus and succulent bed, with a backdrop of grasses to reference the rest of the yard. I planted the Mexican feather Grasses first, directly into the granite path. If anyone can make it in the granite, the heat, and the lack of nutrients, it is them.

I scraped away the mulch and amended the soil with granite and bagfuls of sharp cactus soil (almost to the top of the brickwork). I then went out to a number of nursery’s and bought two of  everything relevant, I was a Micro – Noah, my Arc was more of a circle.

Here is the bed newly planted, I brought in the Lava rocks from around my fish pond – you couldn’t really see them there due to the heavy foliage. They were much better suited to my miniature moonscape. I planted quite densely as I
wanted the bed to resemble a miniature Jurassic Park when matured. I top dressed the bed with pea-gravel and areas of decomposed granite to tie in with the pathway.

These small plants hate clay soil and wood mulches; the crowns would rot, especially in winter. To succeed you must create something of a moonscape for them. The beauty of these otherworldly gardens is the tiny scale of them, they are a lot of fun when you “get in there” with the macro lens at full blast.

“Honey I shrunk the kids!”

“I like the view from here george, what do you think”?                “This is no time to rest, we must keep moving”

“My legs are hurting George”. .”There she goes…             George someone is coming! moaning again”.

“Mildred, just stay low and still, the mighty gloved                         “This is it George, home sweet home”
hand will pass right over us, I promise.”                                                       “lets have a rock warming”

Here is the bed today – starting to fill in.
The more you observe this rocky world the more obscure and captivating is the flora. The scene resembles a coral reef, as much as a rock garden.  I am planning a much larger scale of this bed in my front yard – I may even include some dwarf conifers and the rocks are going to be large boulders.
More on that as it develops.

Other show-offs right now:

Cone flowers with Rosemary and Sage.


A newly planted Canna, the container picks up on                          Tropical Lilly
the color of the foliage. A good layer of bark chips
(also in the same hue) helps to regulate
temperature and moisture.


Figs!

Stay Tuned for:

“My Agave is knocking on Deaths Door”

All material © 2009 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by  late  (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.