“Ah, ha ha ha ha ha, look at your garden now ESP, even the ghost plants are dying…Ah, ha ha ha ha ha.”

Oh very funny Ernie.

Oh wait they have!

This used to be a proud stand of

Graptopetalum paraguayense, 

here it is in the good old days when we used to get rain:

and here they are now looking like the Fallen Trees at Tunguska:

Another one bites the dust…and another one down, another one down…blah,blah,blah,blah,dust.

From ghost plants to ghost ants…

Really, these are ghost ants, 

Tapinoma melanocephalum (Fabricius)

they have clear abdomens and turn the color of whatever they eat.

Funky.

In Malaysia they are known as “corpse ants” because of the unpleasant odor they secrete when crushed.

There are an increasing amount of corpses down at the bottom of my garden, I am sad to say that my already large compost pile has got a little larger of late, especially considering that I only hand water once a week at this point,

a fact that this gopher plant did not seem to care for one little bit.

The cactus man even needs a little eye moisturizing lotion at this point, his pained expression summing up the summer.  I won’t even mention how the Botox Lady’s appearance has deteriorated in the heat….

Shocking, I know.

As you would expect, the cactus man and his family are weathering the dried up tide well.  Look at his head now…quite surreal.

It is interesting that his cousins located in my hell-strip appear a lot more stressed out than him…

…so much stress in fact, that veins are now standing out on the shrunken paddle heads.

It appears that even opuntia is not totally immune to the effects of our prolonged drought and our 2oooth consecutive days of above 120 degree temperatures…well that is how it feels. [Insert the general weather moaning you are accustomed to here].

Now this could make for a terrible camping accident.

Even this pine cone cactus seems to be conserving its energy, very little new growth this year.

Yucca and sotol are still looking good, they are the stars of the drought, though I have noticed some whitening of the leaves…it is not the weevil…it is not the weevil…it is n….

I rather like the new look.

This is one severely parched Patch. I really need a substantial nursery trip to fill in all my bare areas.

But I will wait, bide my time…

just a little longer, (drumming fingers) until our hot weather dissipates once and for all.

The front of the Patch has received only a couple of waterings over the last three or four heated months, a true testament to some extremely adapted-tough and native plants.  It has done relatively well with only my gaura and artemesia, oh and some blackfoot daisies and the odd loquat kicking the dried-up bucket (though I have not fully given up hope for my artemesia Powis Castle just yet).

On a lighter annoying note:

My Mexican feather grasses are looking really good now, especially flattened in front of one of those bare patches I mentioned.

 Oh and do not get me started on this mess again, this is only a weeks-worth of squirrel-nut debris…deep breath…and relax.

I recently came across these detailed illustrations by Si Scott Studios.…amazing detail:

Stay Tuned for:

“Counting Sheep”

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

Captain’s log…Winter Supplemental:

It is another world deep inside ice.

A temporary, volatile world trapped in space with cyclones, random leaves and dark cold skies.

Bubbles like frozen meteors, red matter…

are held suspended in the sky.

There is another world locked deep inside the ice, should you take the time to look.

Mr Tumnes? Mr Tumnes?

Oh, and with a bit of food coloring you can create your very own red hot meteors in the ice.

I just hope this poor sago will pull through better then the dinosaurs did when the last major one hit!  I have my doubts.

Stay Tuned for:

“A Day at the Races”

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

What do you see in the clouds?  Is that a mosquito he is trying to swat?

From what seemed like endless Texas blue skies to…

…sustained deep soakings, a few new rivers have materialized in the ESPatch this week, courtesy of Tropical Storm Alex.

I waded to my shed and launched an old punt boat that I had picked up in Cambridge some years back. It was a lot of fun punting around my decomposed granite pathways, the activity also gave me a whole new and unique perspective on my entire garden, in terms of flow and continuity… Oh dear.

Yes it felt like I was in Venice. I ran into the house for a striped tee-shirt, then down to my corner store to purchase a Cornetto ice cream…I had to make the most of this rare event after all…

As with any summer rains in Texas, they happen about as regularly as the appearance of the genie in this “lamp”.

“I grant you three wishes”.

Mmm, let me see, rain, rain and more rain?

Be careful what you wish for!

I have quite a few of these dead giant timber culms that have turned jet black as a result of last winters prolonged freezes, their colors now reflecting the colors on the background container…What are the chances of that!

…they look very Balinese in the rains!

The Hoja Santa immediately responded to the unexpected influx of moisture. I think they grew almost a foot overnight!  

Great shadow casting foliage for the shade…this is my “hosta” of Texas, (well, as you all know, everything IS bigger in Texas.)

Oh yes, I had a great time picking up the hobbits at the bottom of the steps and taking them on a leisurely punt around the garden paths…“Just a’ one Cornetto…give it too me, delicious ice cream from etc, etc”.

…as we floated around we witnessed a brand new Patch anole, an anole with pronounced spinal ridging, this is a Brown Anole, or at least I believe it is.

Anolis sagret, Norops sagrei

Some male brown anoles like this one are able to extend a crest of skin that runs down the length of their body along their spine. All of these techniques are thought to make the male anole look larger and more intimidating to any invaders he may come across, like me. People often refer to anoles as “chameleons,” though they are actually quite different than chameleons. True chameleons, which belong to the family Chamaeleonidae, are native to Africa, Madagascar, and India and have curly prehensile tails and independently movable eyes. Like chameleons though, anoles are able to change their body color in response to mood or temperature.  This anole had great Avatar coloration and spotting on it’s sides and legs.

We rounded another corner to see the first Moi Grande Hibiscus bloom getting ready to pop…

…a little further and we encountered a soft leaf yucca beaded with moisture, it looked like an advertisement for Turtle wax!  And still the rains came down.

After a few dark days, (a welcome break from the Day Star), the rains subsided, and the sun is once again intermittently coming out, it is a sauna out there!  With the sun came a burst of life, everyone was hungry after the three day hunker from the rains…an immediate feeding and growth frenzy ensued…creature hunting creature, bugs eating bugs, creatures hunting bugs…it was all going on, and it was all going on everywhere.

Climbing the ladder for success, this green anole had its free-fall dive all planned out to capture this swallowtail butterfly.

Butterflies have been all over my pride of Barbados recently, this is a Striated Queen butterfly

“Danaus gilippus strigosus”!

Along with the sunlight came the first Moi Grande hibiscus bloom…

…and it was a beauty! I have no idea how she seems to always match the bloom colors, but she does!

Along with these butterflies and blooms came some new moths:

This velvet curtain is know as a Southern Pink/crimson Moth

Pyrausta inornatalis

The tiny Southern Crimson Moth’s larval food is salvia, this one matched the purple on the amaranth foliage perfectly.

another bright character, a Crambidae or

crambid snout moth

One of the many visitors that my Agastache has brought in.

And finally…

A Hawkmoth perhaps? This was incredibly camouflaged nestled deep inside a rosemary.

“What big eyes you have”.

And yet another first in the ESP…

…a female Eastern Pondhawk.

Erythemis simplicicollis

Pondhawks are aptly named being fearsome predators, they catch butterflies and many other kinds of insects, and can often be found devouring them. The male of the species is blue and the female green.

The rains also created hundreds of these tiny translucent spores at the base of this iris.  It was a whole other ethereal world down in there!  A world where the mosquitoes fly in formations and can strip flesh from bone in seconds.

I managed to get these two shots in of these minute toadstools before running and screaming for the cover of the house, slapping myself as I ran.

Finally…

Rain in Texas at this time of year makes everyone feel like dancing.

Inspirational ‘moment of zen’ design of the week: Technology touches nature:

Description from Tomomi Sayuda:
Oshibe means stamen in Japanese which is where my inspiration came from. But Oshibe is also inspired by other optimistic elements of life: eggs, plants, light and the moon. This is a playful interactive lighting sculpture. When you put eggs on stamens, Oshibe plays tender ambient sounds and lights up. Each stamen plays a different sound. The sounds change according to the number and position of the eggs.

I am hearing Oshibe all around the Patch right now, I am!  Especially at dusk, in and around my pampas grasses.

“This confirms my hypothesis that the Naboo, although small in stature are huge in sound manipulation as a sophisticated form of communication between adjacent tribes”.

Stay Tuned for:

“Garden Coffins”

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

Been out working in the heat of the Texas sun?  On your third tee shirt?  Your fifth iced-turban?  Put your feet in a cooling bucket of water after a hard day’s gardening and relax…this is for you:

“Free Fall: World champion freediver Guillaume Nery special dive at Dean’s Blue Hole,  filmed entirely on breath hold by the french champion Julie Gautier. This video is a fiction and an artistic project. Edited by Bluenery (c)  Music: Archive – you make me feel.”

Dean’s Blue Hole is the world’s deepest blue hole, or underwater sinkhole. It plunges 202 metres (663 ft) in a bay west of Clarence Town on Long Island, Bahamas…Amazing!

Stay Tuned once more for:

“Moi Grande Rain Dance”

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