Creatures of the Deep

“Cosmic Cacti”

ESPatch Aug 26, 2017 1 comment

Our third Bollywood installment also comes from Ram-Leela:

So much has happened since I last posted…

Cosmic solar eclipses, a hurricane, a trip to Canada,

Kosmik Kactus?

Wait, What…No?

“Aye, it’s no right at a’ ESPatch!”

This has gotten out of hand.

I find this obsession with tinkering and making cacti more colorful somewhat disturbing?

Why are they not picking on the succulents in the background?

Oh wait…

As if sticking in fake flowers was not enough, Kosmik Kactus have resorted to just blasting their poor plants with rather bright coloring…just to jazz up the apparently REALLY boring and natural GREEN color of the plant.

“Boldly going where no plant has gone before…”?

Borg Queen: Cacti! We used to be exactly like them. Flawed. Weak. Organic…green. But we evolved to include the synthetic…fake little flowers, spray paint. Now we use both to attain perfection to sell in the box stores. Your goal should be the same as ours.

Okay that was a stretch, moving quickly along to a recent trip to Canada…

Yes the Levwolds were once again taking to the air,

this time headed to Montreal for to compete in the North American Pipe Band Championships in Maxville with

The Silver Thistle Pipes and Drums.

At cruising altitude the window frost resembled Celestial cartography.

Coming in to land.

Time to unpack, hang up the kilt and have a quick ‘dab’ in our hotel room.

Of course I called it a ‘dub’ and got laughed at then reprimanded for apparently doing it completely wrong.

We were hoping to escape to some cooler temperatures in Montreal but unfortunately for us they were in a heatwave, of course they were.

It was hot, really hot and like Europe, not many places had A/C, fans, well, anything really.

I almost lost my mind in a store in China Town.

Hmm, okay?

Sweat was running down my nose, the air was completely still, a sweltering combination of Peking duck and raw sewage hung heavy in the air.

I felt some involuntary head movements coming on, a sure sign my tourist tolerance valve was rattling and about to blow.

Everywhere I looked was shelf after shelf of tourist tat, umbrellas that, we were told, could never blow inside out (naturally we bought 3), chopsticks, fans, jade elephants, you get the idea…I mopped my brow, eye twitching.

I finally cracked at the excruciating duration of time it was taking to pick out some Squishies and a wooden Samurai Sword.

This was an interesting find (well, for me) on a busy street in Old Montreal.

I will forever wonder if the celosia had been growing in there or if someone had dumped it in there?

He found lots of opportunities to cool down on our excursions.

One of our journeys took us to the historic district of old Montreal, to the Notre-Dame Basilica.

The church was built in the gothic revival style,

and is insanely ornate and colorful on the inside.

We passed a lot of street art installations.

This one strangely reminded me of when I used to try to protect my citrus trees from frost.

Ridiculous.

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/01/carnival/

These rotating seats were an instant hit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts:

And then there was the food.

Some traditional,

some extravagant,

and some rather challenging, well, for some people.

Escargot kids!…Dig in!

Let’s take a closer look at that middle one.

The sheer distress.

Moving along…

We headed out of a now rather blustery and wet Montreal for the hour and a half drive to Maxville to compete with another 50 or so bands in the Glengarry Highland Games.

Here is our MSR (March, Strathspey and Reel) performance.

The rain and wind really picked up at the end of the closing ceremonies making surprisingly short work of the umbrella that could not be blown inside out by quickly blowing it inside out.

Time for one last trip, this time to the Montreal botanical Garden.

Exiting the metro we had a great view of the Olympic Park. an impressive structure that would not look out of place in a Star Wars movie.

It was massive!

An elevator runs up the spine.

Entrance to the Montreal botanical Garden

Entrance to the Gardens.

Impressive sedum,

coneflowers,

lots and lots of coneflowers.

The grounds were extensive (about 190 acres of thematic gardens and greenhouses), you could spend days in here.

The grounds are also home to the Montreal Insectarium.

So many specimens.

But by far the strangest critter I encountered was this odd looking chap:

I mean,

really?

All the walking found us a little peckish…

It had a very progressive menu, but after the escargot adventure nobody seemed too keen.

Stay Tuned For:

“Gossiping Wheelbarrows”

All material © 2017 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

“Under the Knife”

ESPatch Oct 23, 2014 7 comments

Oh yes, we have been quite busy of late.

Meet Cactus Man Jr II, an intellectual currently working on his doctoral thesis “Humans Obsession with Opuntia Paddle Personification.”

The slots/wounds at the side of his head will heal over (and secure) the glasses over time…at least that is the goal.

crazy-clown-doctor

Cactus Man Jr II’s grandfather wasn’t quite so lucky when he fell under my knife a few years back.

As you can see, I was significantly less ‘invasive’ with my surgical procedures this time around so I have high hopes for a full recovery.

We each claimed a paddle and got creative,

or somewhat disturbing.

Mist flowers are one of my favorite insect attractors this time of year. They work really well along side steely blue basketgrass and artemesia Silver King, but any artemesia will do.

Just add a splash of Esperanza, a hint of rosemary and stir slowly over a number of years.

I have been performing enough yucca and sotol haircuts recently that my forearms resemble pin cushions.

joe-dirt11 I can live with this mullet-look for a while but then the control freak in me kicks-in and I reach for the Fiskars.

Ahh, it can breathe again.

I even had some pine-cone cactus growing at the base of the plant that I had forgotten about.

This sotol at a clients house was a monster, it must have had 10+ years of old growth at the base, some of it buried.

It took me about an hour to work around it, trimming its spiny locks. I was spiked, bitten by fire-ants, clawed at and by the time I was finished both of my ears were bleeding.

Next time I will were some protection. I think a couple of these with an iced turban should look significantly ridiculous.

Here is a before shot of the front area:

And after clean-up:

A fresh layer of Tejas black gravel was put down in the front of the house and a planter planted with…

a bonsai Juniper tree.

I think I will have to get one of these twisted trees myself.

Two additional steel planters were planted up with spineless sotol

Dasylirion longissimum

…if any plant can take the heat, this one can.

At another clients house I was called out to perform a postmortem on an agave that had recently gone into decline.

Here is the agave a few months ago:

and now:

There were some tell-tale signs; holes in the leaves, unearthly odor, it was a mess. A gentle tug released the heart of the plant confirming it was once again the work of the notorious agave villain:

Dum dum duummm…

Mr Snout-Nose…AKA: “The Evil Weevil”

Known to his inner circle as:

Scyphophorus acupunctatus

This time the sneaky villain had managed to clone himself.

This poor agave was full of his duplicates and a disturbing amount of the weevil’s grubs that were now furiously devouring the inside of the agave, causing it to turn to mush and collapse on itself.

It wasn’t a pretty site,

and it wasn’t a pretty smell.

This beetle is deadly for agaves.

I have lost many a fine specimen plant to the trunked-tyrant myself, particularly Agave Americana which, as I understand it, tastes like freshly baked pecan pie and cream to Mr Weevil.

If infected I take out the dying plant and cover the entire area with diatomaceous earth. I avoid planting in the same hole.

As for other plants that may be effected or at risk, I put a thick circle of diatomaceous earth around the base of the plants and replenish regularly.

Oh, and when I find a dead weevil or one journeying in the open looking for a host agave to decimate, I turn into Vlad the Impaler. I leave tiny clumps of them on ceremonial skewers to deter others…and I like insects.

“No Bear, it is not a waste!”

On a brighter note after retching a few times getting the rotted limbs of the agave into the bed of my truck, I did take some time to snap a few pictures of the landscape that I installed last spring.

Before:

Lots of linear lines, patchy turf and odd stepping-stone flagstones needed to be taken out.

There were some nice corten steel planters to work with though.

Here is the visual I generated for the space to communicate a more organic and naturalistic aesthetic:

Installation:

Linheimer Muhly grasses filling in well,

along with the gulf coast muhly.

No more grass to water and cut here.

Snapshots in the Patch:

Celosia is setting seed.

Mexican firebush threatens to ignite some crusty old inland sea oats.

Miscanthus grasses glow gold this time of the year,

and Salvia Leucantha just keeps on going…yes the Vitex is still there!

Stay Tuned For:

“Shelling Out”

All material © 2014 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.