Our vacation shells have all been poured out around these baby jewels of Opar and this juvenile pinwheel sotol, the shells are a welcome reminder of our cooler and relaxing days spent at the beach. My brief holiday reprieve was immediately tempered on my return with an immediate 100+ degree jolt back into garden install reality. With my iced turban tying skills apparently lacking finesse (lack of practice), I have been forced to adapt to our current heated Texas temperatures the hard way…with a wayward turban combined with some plain old-fashioned hard work in the sun.

By the end of my first week back, I looked pretty grim.

I am hoping the Texas Sage,  (barometer plant)  that has been blooming all over town knows something the weatherman doesn’t.

One of my favorite tough shrubs.  Both of these will be getting a hard pruning after this flush of blooms.

My celosia plants are curling on a daily basis as if they are trying to protect and shade themselves from the scorching rays of the death star,

rays that seem to be getting hotter and brighter with every passing day. The baking sun has been good for one thing though…

It has dried out these dead giant timber culms enough that when I pulled on one the other day It surprisingly moved a little at the base. This could not be a good thing, massive culms teetering over my neighbors house. Oh no, these needed to come down immediately. The bamboo roots had completely rotted and with a sharp twist they came away easily at the base, no saws or machete hacking required! I was feeling quite proud of myself until I realized that I was now wielding a forty foot spear.

“Ach ESP, thats nuthin’ we’ve bult spears twice that lungth before…and used them against the English in batt…”

Pie-hole William, shut it.

After cutting them to size these culms made great additions to my ever expanding bamboo fence.

Talking of fences, okay gates, remember this east side design?

Here is the rendering (left), and here is the hardscape (minus planting) installed and awaiting a softening fall planting. The Tejas black gravel and pale boulders reference the home colors, offering the visual illusion of widening the preexisting pathway.

Moving on:

If this sunken stock tank did not have a Madame Ganna Walska growing in it (now there is something you don’t get to say every day) I would be in it, squatting to my neck with some ice from the corner store attempting to cool down under the canopy of this Arizona ‘blue ice’ cypress.

My goal is to train this beach vitex and keep wrapping it all around the perimeter of the stock tank. (Sorry Les)… http://atidewatergardener.blogspot.com/

These purple fountain grasses,

Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’

have sprung up so fast this year, basking and swaying in the heated breezes.

This grass will look good well into the fall.

I keep planting the seeds from the background pride of Barbados all down this fence line, every year I seem to gain another couple of plants…

well worth the effort.

Datura is also in full-flight at the moment,

pushing out its psychotropic napkin blooms.

I dug up this star hibiscus late spring and replanted it in a large pot, placing and treating it like a marginal plant in my pond (thanks for the advice Bob, http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/ ). It first went into shock, I kept a close eye on it, then it rebounded with vigor and is doing better then it ever did in the ground.  It has grown taller and developing a set of very decorative looking blooms.

Another stock tank experiment is slowly taking shape and filling in slowly with dwarf papyrus and horsetail reed.  This tank is commonly referred to as the “disgusting tub’ by my halflings for a number of reasons.  First of all I go around systematically prodding it with a bamboo cane, it generally responds with a few flatulent noises to the delight of everybody, secondly, as I filled the tank with Dillo Dirt, conversation wandered to exactly what Dillo Dirt was made from…well the “disgusting tub” obviously gained even more relevance. The event that sealed it as a place to avoid was when a bamboo prod led to the expulsion of the nasty stuff in a particularly violent air-bubble that sent some of the contents airborne and onto the side of my face. (Insert lots of ewwing).

 I no longer prod this tank.

Finally:

Things tend to get quite surreal in the Patch when we hit three digit temperatures for a long period of time…

Brains get a little scrambled,

 
animals start going insane.

“Meoww…Kumo…look what I caught!”

“Is that a Carolina ‘pant’ Saddlebag dragonfly?”

Tramea carolina

” I believe it is my,eoww feather grass loving friend”

“Are you going to eat it?”

“Not immediately Kumo, I just need to torture it a little meow-more.”

“Kitty-kitty”!

Stay Tuned for:

“A Star is Born”

All material © 2011 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

Echinacea…

the story book flower.

mother nature must have been hitting the datura hard when she dreamed up this plant.

She also did pretty good on the frosty white and tropical coloration of this butterfly iris (also known as Peacock Flower, Bicolor Iris, Evergreen Iris, Spanish Iris and African Iris, phew!):

Dietes bicolor

This little beetle was hiding under one of the plant’s veils.

This plant has been throwing out blooms for some time now…(full sun), it will be divided in the fall.

“uh oh!”

This “Man in Black” pulled up in one of the innocuous grey vehicles the other day, for some reason he kept inspecting the ground below my opuntia tree which is in full bloom right now.  As dusk fell he proceeded to venture deep inside the dangerous Naboo territories of my back garden.

I have absolutely no idea why.

“I knew it all along Scully, didn’t I tell you those Mexican gazing balls were in fact beacons”.

“We mean your species no croak…harm”.

FLASH!

Santolina is in top frosty form right now.  I always seem to worry about this plant at various times throughout the year, it gets leggy at times and occasionally browns in sections just to give me a scare. This slow growing plant requires some periodic pruning attention, but the results are well worth it. I need more of it.

Here is another one decorating a tree fern.

This evergreen wisteria

Milletia reticulata Benth

has more Gothic blooms on it this year then I have ever seen.  It is covered in these old-suit-in-the-back-of-the-closet purple smelling blooms.

I like it.  The heavy aroma fills up a good part of the Patch at this time of year. This plant, being the eldest always blooms first and it will keep on producing well into the summer, my other wisterias pick up the hard-to-describe smelling baton a little later.

I made the fatal mistake of planting this one on a metal support which it has consumed and is now proceeding to drag skyward…word of warning.

This beach vitex has almost made it half way round this stock tank, a couple more years should do it. It has also started to bloom.

This plant is a major problem in many coastal regions where it flourishes and smothers native plant species.

Polihale Beach, Kauai. Image by Forest & Kim Starr.

The same stock tank is also currently full of toad spawn,

wrapping the emerging water lilies shut…Madame Ganna Burrito.

Finally:

Feather grasses catching the breeze.

Gaura or aptly named “Whirling Butterflies”.

I am still trying to get to the bottom of these Datura seedpod strings that are touching the ground. What are they? Why are they there?

Stay Tuned for:

“Rikky Ikky Ivy”

All material © 2011 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

(Minority Report spider robot swarm)

“I confirm 28 warm bodies… What do you think – four spiders, one per floor?”

“Let’s do eight – I gotta eat!”

Futuristic daddy long legs or harvestmen.

In the good old days it was believed if you killed a daddy long legs it would rain the next day (unless you live in central Texas, naturally).  Another rather implausible myth was that if this creature were picked up by seven of its eight legs, the free leg would point in the direction of lost cattle.

“But it really works m’ lord.”

“Baldrick, your brain is like the four headed, man-eating haddock fish beast of Aberdeen”
“In what way?”
“It doesn’t exist “

Harvestmen are fascinating creatures, the name Harvestmen comes from their being seen in late summer and fall at harvest time.  Although seen during the day they are primarily night prowlers and solitary in habit. I disturbed three or four in a brick pile, all of them took off for dark cover, but this one paused on a wood plank where I got a quick photo-shoot. The common name, daddy long legs, is also used (and often confused) with crane flies.  This creature is not even a spider but belongs to a large group of jointed animals with eight legs, known as the Opiliones, they do not spin webs or build nests and they also only have only two eyes like a human.

You can just make out an eye protruding from a small pedestal above its torso in this picture. Obviously the most striking feature of these creatures are its long legs which they also employ as a defense mechanism. Their legs detach easily from the body and will continue to twitch for quite some time after amputation, confusing and distracting a would-be predator.

This twitching continues because there is a pacemaker-like organ located in the ends of the first long segment of their legs. This “pacemaker” send signals via the nerves to the muscles to extend the leg and then the leg relaxes between signals…an ingenious mechanism.  Harvestmen are beneficial insects and have a wide ranging diet which includes, aphids, beetles, caterpillars, earthworms, flies, mites, small slugs, snails and spiders, and extends to fecal matter and fungi, (subtle knee rumblings).  After each meal it cleans each leg, drawing them, one at a time through its jaws. Brrr.

Quickly changing the topic…

Burgundy canna and rusted steelwork makes a great combination.  The Variegated Japanese pittosporum (left) is one of my favorite shrubs for shade / part shade.

Here it is getting hit with a sprinkler (mainly for the benefit of the loquats that are beginning to droop and brown with our lack of precipitation). I kept seeing these two little people darting here and there, in fact everywhere I moved the sprinkler.

Here they are, off the trail checking their maps under my Afghan Pine, a dangerous thing in the Patch.

The glass monocled cactus-man looked on with his most worried of expressions (with a hint of annoyance), his new crowning top paddles making him look more deranged then ever.

We had a carrot harvest this week and although they looked pretty good, I am sure an

would have been sweeter and much less bitter on the taste buds. What were they lacking? Did I leave them in the ground too long?

Another oddity this week courtesy of these datura seedpods:  what are the function of these hanging strands?

This bi-colored oxalis or commonly called shamrock plant is throwing out pink blooms right now.

The real Irish shamrock plant:

Trifolium dubium

is a clover relative and is tradititionally worn on the lapel on St Patrick’s Day.  There is an old practice of dunking the plant into the final drink of the night, and throwing the leaves over the left shoulder before knocking back the dregs of ‘Patrick’s Pot’.

Observed this week:

Pride of Barbados is once again on the rise and this

veiled butterfly iris is producing lots of blooms at the moment.

A broken gourd makes for an interesting impromptu headdress,

and the tiniest glimmer of life emerges from this potted sago.

Anole getting ready to plunge onto some prey.

And finally:

The royal Patch trumpets have been waking us up in full cry every morning this week before dawn.

Stay Tuned for:

“Spores”

All material © 2011 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

I happened to witness the Patch witches harvesting their annual cull of gulf coast toads the other evening with their wretched smelling hessian sacks.

I could see their protruding moles and dark silhouettes stumbling up the ladder with their ladened croaking bounty, dragging it up high to their treacherously positioned home in the upper canopy of my recently leafed-out post oak tree, no doubt for use in some horrible disfiguring spell.

Naboo rumor has it that the warty trio are very close to signing a major contract with Whole Foods Market to commercialize one of their herbal remedies, if this happens they have apparently expressed interest into moving into a downtown condo! Their preferred form of transport being the broom negates the pothole issues we humans face driving in the downtown region…(Oh yes, I am not stopping with my “state of the Austin roads” rant).

I love deep shadows in a landscape, they add so much depth and intrigue to a space though I must say we have all stayed well away from this dark cavern between the feather grasses, below my Arizona ‘blue ice’ cypress.

Painting: “Once Upon a Time” by Henry Meynell Rheam.

My feather grasses are now entering their Patch prime and putting on a great late afternoon light show with their newly formed panicles. These plants are a couple of years old and have been through some vigorous experimentation and a couple of Brazilian blow-outs:

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/05/knotty-dreads/

Imagine my surprise when I recently lifted the lid on my trashcan.

“Yeah Nassella tenuissima Baby, yeah”!

And then who popped up with his dry British wit from my neighbors trashcan?

“Hairstyle Plagiarism, that’s what that is!”

…I quickly slammed down both lids before anyone heard the chat-up lines begin, I looked around and listened nervously for a big white van drawing up to the front of the Patch…I apparently got lucky this time.

Enough nonsense…

I said enough!

If you are like me and have this little abomination popping up all over your garden you will totally relate to this next segment and my mentally unstable relationship with it.

Melothria pendula?

(anyone know what this weed is called?)

I cannot describe to you how deep the level of my hatred goes for this incredibly obnoxious weed…perhaps even deeper then Bermuda grass, yes I said Bermuda grass.

This aesthetically strangling plant loves nothing more then tucking itself in tight to the base of plants, in this case my artemesia, (of which it appears to be quite fond, I imagine due to the delicate nature of this plants stems). Pulling it is completely futile, and nearly always results in an emotionally demoralizing “snap” leaving the roots to shoot up foliage once again the very next day.

This abomination of nature is also very fond of sprouting between bricks, Mexican bush sage and rosemary, okay practically anywhere it can inhabit. Snap. It seems to know if it grows like this, snap, the gardener can not, and will not, attack it with RoundUp in fear of destroying the “host” plant it is cleverly growing under and through, snap…

…“a most cunning plan…t”

Scrambling along:

Stonecrop is blooming everywhere right now,

it is amazing how it casts down these long red ropes over the sides of my Texas holey rocks in an attempt to scale down and propagate the new terrains below.

“I could do with one of those red lifelines right about now!”

This garden snake gave me my first full-on conniption at an install I am working on.  It came out waving around on me at waist height from a retainer wall I was clearing out. In usual fashion I recoiled and almost stumbled over another lower wall, another foiled Darwin Award!

It slithered around for a while trying to find cover, it eventually took refuge in this small hole between the boulders.

The scales were quite something.

Finally:

The candy blooms on this aloe vera look good enough to eat.

Gaura is in full bloom,

as are larkspur.

(Thanks for the seeds M) http://www.zanthan.com/gardens/gardenlog/

Moody datura is once again blooming,

An unusual moment of Zen for him…

and a moment of excited expectation for her…the tooth fairy (her very first loss) she also lost some blood this week and required a couple of staples in her head after a playground accident.

And to finish, some classic old English comedy:
We had our own “Good Life” moment this week when we gathered around to pull up a test carrot, a major family event.

unfortunately,

It was more carrot top then actual carrot, but she enjoyed it.

Stay Tuned for:

“The Rock”

All material © 2011 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.