Continued… As I leaned forward, duct tape at the ready, her botoxed lips reverberated with every exhale,  showering me with an extraordinary amount of saliva. She was still fast asleep, or so I thought, but I began to worry…would the adhesive work with such an abundance of moisture?  I soldiered on, ever closer. It seemed the whole garden fell silent, it was if every creature in the ESP was completely stationary, waiting to see what would happen next…

The brown-nosers didn’t twitch a nasal hair, the carver bees put down their chisels in the fragrant mist flowers, burying their heads in the pollen filled flowers as if not daring to watch the scene unfold.

This newly hatched dinosaur could not believe what he was witnessing as his first visual scenes fresh out of his egg, an egg sac that was still at this point…

attached onto his hind leg, this poor little anole was having to drag it around with him.

“Huh? What? Oh do not even think about it!  Izzard ESP…Izzard“!

The Paper wasps high up in the adjacent amaranth decided to just turn their backs, the suspense was also too much for them it seems.

Just as I was about to strike with the tape, the Botox lady’s large, cat-like eyes opened wide!  Uh Oh!

She opened her mouth in retort, and just before she screamed out in her loud Austrian accent, I had an uncustomary moment of pure clarity…yes…it might just work… I leaned in and whispered into her sea-shell ear four words that immediately got her undivided attention…“Shhh, Its bulk collection day,” which coincidentally was the same day as the shoot!

She was so quiet during the CTG film shoot, nobody knew she was even there, not even Linda!

Not a single lip-flapping, saliva spitting, napkin mopping lip-peep!

Silence IS Golden.

Other strange happenings in the Patch this week:

“Captain, it appears we have a Euclea delphinii – Euclea , on the starboard bow”

Spiny Oak-Slug Moth

This is a stinging caterpillar, it looks like it would be!  This caterpillar looks like it would be as happy on a coral reef as it would be on a variety of trees. Amazing patterns and shapes, I found this “kling-on” resting on top of my recycling bin, situated under a large Post Oak tree.

“Sounds like my kind of caterpillar eh Eddie.”

The larvae in this group are unique in that they are leg-less. Many have stinging spines. These have to be among some the most beautiful caterpillars out there!  They also come in a rainbow of different colors and designs, this one just happens to be lime green and orange.

Image taken from rustyblackbird’s photostream under the creative commons attribution-non-commercial-no derivative 2.0 licence

Here is the small moth the larvae grows into. I have still yet to see one in person.

“”Who loves ya, baby? You know this next one is my favorite ESP”…

Cigar Plant,

Cuphea ignea

The species name ignea is Latin for fire.

The cigar plant is native to Mexico and the islands of the West Indies. It is a relatively fast grower and requires little attention. It is also a party place for all manner of butterflies and hummingbirds, they love these tubular flowers. I like the foliage, (imagine that), they are very tropical, with an abundance of leaves that grow all the way down the plants stem, for an added layering effect.

Here is my Barbados cherry, also providing some color right now with all it’s red berries…although they never last very long on the plant, at least, not in the Patch…

The shiny red ones are harvested it seems as fast as their color changes. The Artemisia, Powis Castle, hill in the background has really filled in with the recent rains.

I caught this minute translucent spider throwing up his huge arms in aggressive indignation on the approach of the camera lens, on one of my Jewels of Opar? (Oh yes, I will find a way of getting this plant into yet another post).

Look at that peeping eye! Now this has to be the smallest stink-eye caught on camera, ever!  Oh you can beat it?  Oh and is that really an eye?

Here he is scurrying away at high speed from the camera.  He actually shot a Spider-Man line of silk to expedite his escape to an adjacent branch.

My fragrant mistflowers have finally started to decline after an illustrious display of grandeur this year, I guess conditions have been just about perfect for this plant.

I still think the plant is aromatically challenged though Pam :-)

This Mexican Lime tree has also been a solid producer this year, we have had limes from this tree all summer long, and there are still plenty ripening as you can see.  This tree has really grown a lot this year, it is actually starting to finally look like a mature citrus tree…almost!

Purple in the Patch. Anyone know what the dark purple plant with the broad leaves is in the foreground?

Moving around to the front of the ESP…

Sago and Opuntia climbing to new heights, oh yes I will have my Opuntia tree, won’t I Germi?  I recently planted these three Agave americana pups around this scene to add a splash of spiky drama. The soil in this part of the patch is particularly nasty, I thought these guys should be able to handle the adverse conditions, and wanted to get them started.  The color and form of the agaves should work well with the darkness of the sago in the background. This hell-strip will eventually be dug down a little and the soil replaced with decomposed granite, one bit of the hell-strip at a time, that is what I say!

“I find myself completely disagreeing with that final statement ESP. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to finish the hell-strip first, then progress to the rest of the garden, and I do like to think of myself as having a bit of a red thumb”.

Stay Tuned for:

“The Sacrifice”

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

Syrphid Fly? or Waspy, green, grass-hoppery weird bee thingy, summat or nothin’?

This adult Syrphid Fly (I hope I am right with this identification) is unlike any I have ever seen in the Patch…It is green! What manner of creature is he trying to mimic? Most Hoverflies mimic bees and wasps to protect themselves from predators, this one even had a “buzz” sound as it flew around, trying to be even more convincing…but green? I know it is a fly as it has only two wings, short antenna, and large compound eyes.

Like a multitude of insects in the garden this week, it was completely engrossed in my fragrant mist flowers that are now  going at full tilt, stinking up a whole section of the garden…now am I the only one but is the term “fragrant” used extremely “loosely” to describe the overpowering fragrance of this plant? I may not care for the stench of  it too much, but the insects, the moths, and brown nosers seem to love it.

Can someone ID this bug?

Here is the mist flower its all its cloudy glory.

The favorite past times of the week, have been moth catching and handling…

…a spot of entomology…

and some obligatory bubble fountain fondling, his face says it all!

The fragrant mist flower also succeeded in attracting this…No, not Sid James, this…

A Great Purple Hairstreak,

Atlides halesus…

this has to be one of our most beautiful southern butterflies.  Although it is most commonly known as the great purple hairstreak, it has no purple on it. The brilliant iridescent scales on the upper surface of the wings from which it gets its name are blue not purple.  This is also a new visitor in the patch, the “fragrance” is pulling them all in it seems!

Here is the fragrant mist flower earlier in the year, with Mexican petunia, a hint of Barbados, and a loquat as a backdrop.  As  I was sitting down in front of the mist flower today, taking bug pictures, I could hear the audible popping of the petunia seed pods as the sun heated them up… throwing their seeds as far as they can muster, what a great explosive technique!

Next stop for me: Gregg’s mistflower!

Philippine Violet

Barleria cristata

has also now made it to the ranks of full bloomer. The dark foliage really sets off the purple blooms on this very “classy” looking plant. I plan to get a bunch of these planted at the far end one end of one of my beds, the dark foliage backdrop and height will work well for some lower growing frontal “poppers”…something that does not bloom at the same time, Mmm?

Another great combination planting  is the spiky, soft leafed yucca, married with the fuzzy blooms of a swath of Mexican bush sage…

Salvia leucantha

The way the blooms weave their way through the yucca is an added visual bonus.

The contrast of the soft purple blooms with the spikey yucca just works,

I think this would also look great as a mass planting with a couple of large sotols!  The height would almost be perfect, being a little taller than the yucca.

Here are mine with a line of Mexican feather grasses in the front, the embedded yucca and a few arching lemon grasses, and of course a few random amaranths thrown in for good measure.  The sotol (far left) is in a different bed, but ohhh I can see the future so clearly now!  I also have a young sotol planted in the middle of this bricked circular bed, (almost hidden in this picture). When mature it will almost fill the diameter of the brickwork, while still allowing all the smaller plants to fill-in around the edges… the taller “antler” plants will be moved.

Why do sotols have to take so long to grow anyway?  It seems to take them forever to get going then, all of a sudden…

kaboom!  Overnight it seems, they get enormous – love this razor-sharp plant!

Moving on…

Oh yes… I have been flailing around the Patch like Tom Hanks in the hilarious “bee scene” in the movie “The Money Pit” of late, why? Because of these…

“Got One”!

“Why you little…”

I am so tired of the mosquitoes this year, is it just me or has this been a “bumper” (ahem) year?  To make matters worse they are also coming through the “Dude where’s my Car?” hole in the side of our house where the Tahoe came unexpectedly into our living-room for some very late afternoon tea some weeks back.  An average movie-watching evening in the Patch now consists of everyone sporadically slapping themselves about their heads. To the outside world, we must look like lunatics through our windows. This endless slapping is always preceded by either a disappointed “Uurrgh”! Or “Got One”!  At which point we all have a

“Walton’s moment”, all happy and supportive and such. Interestingly, and ironically, we used to have to slap our TV to get a clear, snow-free, reception, but since the collision (it happened directly behind our TV) it has miraculously fixed itself… amazing what a Chevy Tahoe impact can do for some temperamental consumer electronics.

We have even started to spray repellent on the hobbits at bedtime, it has got that bad – Frodo uses a whole bottle of spray at a time just to cover his rather large feet!  The mosquitoes are eating us alive. Last night one particularly annoying mosquito became obsessed with the inside passages of my right ear, you know how you can hear them buzz when they get in there?  This one kept it up for hours, almost asleep…bzzzzz, almost asleep…bzzzz… etc.etc. I can’t wait for a cold snap to kill them once and for all, can you tell?

Purple amaranth growing to great heights.  The pine cone cactus provided some eerie Halloween atmosphere in my middle bed, with it’s slender ghostly fingers. The Jewels of Opar (bottom left), seem to make it into every post I write recently. I did learn today that it’s nickname is Old Lady Hat Pin, because the thin stalks and flower pods resemble the old fashioned long hat pins ladies used to use to hold their hats in place.

Looking down the throat of this agave, a shadow caught my eye.

Ripening satsumas. Almost there, this little tree is buckling even more now as the fruit have swollen, mmm, maybe that is the reason to thin them out somewhat? Anyway it is going to be a great fall harvest, to be exact 94!  Give or take one or two.

Finally I would like to give my sincerest thanks to Linda and the super friendly film-crew at CTG for entering bravely into the ESP last Monday. The Naboos finally allowed everyone right-of-passage, after all the paperwork was completed.  A lot of mouth clicking later we were all guaranteed that no-one would get hit with a poisoned blow dart…something that I have feared for weeks.  The morning of the shoot, before anyone arrived, I stealthily walked slowly to my shed. I calmly removed a roll of silver duct tape. Cutting a length from the roll, I walked slowly back up to where the Botox Lady was loudly “resting”. I knelt like a knight beside her stone head, my hands unwillingly approaching her rather large snoring mouth, my duct tape at the ready… you will not believe what happened to me next…She…

Stay Tuned for:

“Silence is Golden”

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

Ghost House

I DWELL in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

Image taken from jipol’s Flickr photostream under the creative commons attribution-non-commercial-no derivative 2.0 licence

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me–
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,–
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things, As sweet companions as might be had.

poem by: Robert Frost

Whatever happens… Don’t fall asleep!

From Robert Frost to Robert Englund. This potato vine caught my attention when Freddie’s hand suddenly appeared behind  it.

Eeek

Eeek

Eeek

Eeek!

I must have nodded-off picking up old blackened pecan nuts, it is an irritating habit of mine!

Halloween is upon us once more, and the ESP witches are in full-cry, swooping and circling around my post oak, cackling their ferocious words into the night. I observed them huddled around the grave of the Cactus Man, and they were mumbling something.  I crept in closer to hear what they were saying.  Hiding behind my Mexican lime tree, I heard them whisper the blood-curdling words “ressurectum Opuntium”, this got my undivided attention. After the witches had done their obligatory cackles and finger waggling they flew off into the night. I ran to the Cactus Man’s tombstone and with my flashlight, shined light on his grave. I peered in closely and reached in to straighten his tombstone, (it was the least I could do)…then, like a rather predictable horror movie, I noticed a slight indiscernible movement, a subtle movement of top-soil.  I peered in closer… To my horror,  a small wizened paddle started to inch it’s way through the granite soil, a paddle followed by…

…The rest of his emaciated body.

Eeek

Eeek

Eeek

Eeek!

What manner of curse could do this?  The Cactus Man had been exhumed from his spiky grave, unfortunately he still had his old, disturbing grimace, he had returned from the dead!  He was a zombie cactus.

I (like in all bad movies) predictably dropped my flashlight in panic,  ran into my house and bolted shut all the doors and windows, then I remembered the hole in the house that the Chevy Tahoe had created…

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/09/dude-wheres-my-car/

Was this hole big enough for a zombie cactus paddle to squeeze itself through?

I was convinced the Cactus Man had come back up from his granity-grave to reap his revenge on me with his OWN set of cactus knives, tiny files, and a general array of small gardening implements of torture.

The next morning I returned to the grave and found the Cactus Man and one of his cousins that was also a victim of my general genocide.  It seems the curse was only a temporary resurrection, lucky for me.  This was an innocent cacti family that died as a result of my mad experimental horticultural “carvings”. Something I will never attempt again.

Robert Ripley’s Believe it or Not

While all this drama played out, the nearby Botox lady was freaking out…screaming out for me to “Get ze shrunken coconut heads avay” from her, in her loud Austrian accent, trust me, you do not want to be in the local vicinity of her lips when she shouts like this. (Say it don’t spray it!)
I re-dug the grave and laid them to rest again, side-by-side, and gently positioned their intrinsic root structures under each of their cacti-chins, like fake beards.. I think they would have wanted it that way.

RIP old friend…ridiculous.

Moving forward…

While I was clambering around on top of one of my artemisia hills I made the fatal mistake of getting just a little too close to one of my large Pampas grasses. The grass reached out with a ghostly strand and (unbeknownst to me) encircled part of my arm. As I pulled my arm out of the artemisia the grass latched on.  The result…

A rather poor, under exposed photograph of my arm laceration, or had I just fallen asleep again?

Whatever happens… Don’t fall asleep!

What Halloween post would be complete without the gargoyled face of a bat-faced cuphea, which as if on cue is blooming right now.  Is he sticking his tongue out?

My Mexican bush sage is certainly pulling in the crowds at the moment…

along with motion…

and color.

While my fragrant mist flowers are looking hauntingly Gothic, attracting equally Gothic black and white bees.

Click on the Image to get to see this bee up-close.

There are about 242 species of Megachile bees or leaf cutting bees in North America.  They belong to a larger group that includes also other leaf cutting as well as mason bees; these are all very good pollinators with very interesting habits.

These fuzzy bees are solitary creatures, meaning that each mother takes care of her own brood- a few form small colonies, but they are not truly social, they merely share the entrance to their nests. They nest in a variety of cavities in rotten wood or hollow stems. There are even some that nest underground.

Most bees carry pollen in baskets on their legs. However, Megachile is different; the underside of the female’s abdomen is particularly furry and is used for this purpose.  They are so animated with their “Bugs Life” antenna, and mono-chromatic coloration. This is the first one I have ever caught in the patch. I hope I see more.

I have three mist flower plants, planted side by side and when they break into bloom, like they have this week, the insects go completely bananas…lots of moths, flies, hoverflies, bees and a whole bunch of these…

Ailanthus Webworm Moth

Atteva punctella

These buggy UT fans were all over this plant.  The caterpillar of this chap eats the leaves of the dreaded Tree of Heaven (interestingly named)  Ailanthus altissima, or Chinese sumac.

These moths keep their wings rolled up tightly against their bodies, unlike other moths with wings outspread. Its native habitat is South and Central America where they build communal webs in native trees.

One final visitor that I was really happy to see, arrived in large numbers to dine on these “fragrant” mist flowers…

brown “American Snout” butterflies,

Libytheana carinent

“The Clangers” … I grew up on this stuff!

And quite the fine snout it has indeed. These brown nosers have been migrating across Texas in biblical proportions recently attracting media attention.

Apparently the breeding conditions have been perfect for them this year. Snout butterflies have prominent elongated mouth-parts (labial palpi) which give the appearance of the petiole (stem) of a dead leaf.  They like to hang up-side-down under leaves to further enhance the illusion.

I am happy a few of them made it into the Patch.

A few more observations this week…

Ice-plant, pine-cone cactus and a ripening satsuma. The Barbados cherry on the left is also forming a ton of berries at the moment.

As is this:

The aptly named “Jewels of  Opar“… a chemistry model in the sky.

It is truly living up to it’s name.  Great fall color.

I was not the only one to think so.  Before I had a chance to run down (in cinematic slow-motion) the patch’s pathways shouting …”Noooooo”,  a bunch of these attractive tiny berries had been cut down by a set of plastic secateurs.

The same secateurs that have caused numerous “No! They’re Mine” arguments and multiple finger-nipping escapades,  that I have now come to hate the mere sight of their plastic, bright yellow presence… I have to learn more tolerance!

And finally…

Guess what has accumulated in here after all our recent rains?  This papyrus is under the illusion that it really is growing on the banks of the Nile.

Light a pepper candle for the dead.

Happy Halloween from the ESP.

“See you later tonight in your garden dreams, I will show you how I do MY pruning”.

Eeek

Eeek

Eeek

Eeek!

Whatever happens… Don’t fall asleep!

This should help…

Brrrrrrr!

Stay Tuned for:

“CUT!”

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

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