As it turned out, I couldn’t.

The tooth fairy will be fluttering into the Patch tonight, let me back up a little.

She came home, sticking her tongue behind her front tooth, forcing it forward to a particularly unnatural angle (which looked completely ridiculous). She quietly asked me how I used to pull out my loose teeth when I was a kid. I barely finished telling her when she came back from the kitchen, sat beside me, reached into her mouth with a paper towel and tugged…

Not thinking she would actually go through with my “procedure”, her actions took me by complete surprise…”pop”!

I believe I was wincing more then her, the sound of her tooth exiting her gum had me up and about, involuntary performing a silly walk around my front room.

Quickly changing the subject…

After receiving a recent dowsing of rain (just shy of four inches) in classic Texas gully-washer fashion, these Gothic toadstools emerged overnight.

Calm down Bella!

This one was particularly disgusting, but I have had a lot worse in the Patch…who could forget this:

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/04/my-sweet-olive-oil/

Another fast responder to the rains are the

oxalis,

Fatsia Japonica and

my Persian ivy. 

Weeds have also responded positively to a “wee-nip” of the wet stuff…

I have been pulling out massive amounts of dandelions and a bunches of these

Erodium cicutarium

or Redstem Storks Bill (the fruit of the plant resembles a bird’s beak).

Not a bad looking weed really. The finely divided leaves and rosette growth habit are distinctive features of this winter annual weed.

I was also informed by Patricia that traditionally a leaf tea from the plant was used to induce sweating and as a diuretic. The leaves have also been put to use in the bathtub to help treat rheumatism.

Thanks for this Patricia.

Now where is my trowel?

Bluebonnets, poppies, blood-stained celosia and more weeds are battling it out in the Hellstrip

it looks like it will be a good show come the spring.

These feather grasses are in desperate need of a good grooming

and gopher plants are ready to be cut back.

The new central growth offers a good reminder of when it is time for some pruning. I generally wait until the older longer stalks start to look really bad before I attack them. Be sure to wear gloves, the sap from this plant can be quite an irritant…I found out the hard way:

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/11/“i-decapitated-a-gopher”/

Moving on:

Lots of purple and pinks showing up this week in the Patch…lantana and artemesia ‘Powis Castle’.

Desert trumpet blooms do not last long on the vine with snaggletooth around.

Finally:

Back to the rock tumbling…snort

I am relieved to say that we have passed onto the final stage…polishing. Every time he lifts the lid to this cooler and rock tumbler he emits the same refrain: “Phew, that stinks!”…and it really does.

No need to call the authorities, this is the aluminum oxide polish going into the drum.

and here are the rounded stones pre-polishing.

Now to wait yet another ten days, it is a long process this rock tumbling business and it is testing my patience almost as much as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”…I said almost.

I will leave you with this image outside a restaurant in east Austin:

Chickens going to roost.

Stay Tuned for:

“Turning the Corner”

All material © 2012 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

Inspirational Image of the week:

Some rather exuberant New Years firework antics succeeded in igniting the same sago palm as last year, (somewhat of a tradition at this point).

This year, the pyrotechnics also successfully singed a few of my ornamental grasses:

Our “Grand Finale” firework that was placed ceremoniously and somewhat precariously on top of a bucket on top of a trashcan provided quite the spectacle. I was intending to take some pictures of it but the firework simultaneously ignited four of my Mexican feather grasses and had us grabbing buckets from my “everything but the kitchen sink” water collection “system” to extinguish the fires before they reached the Barbados cherry and butterfly iris.

I will keep an eye on these blackened grasses, they may respond well to the singeing.

An exciting week this week in the Patch…

…yes folks, snort, I am proud to announce 

that we have finally moved onto the “medium-fine” silicon carbide abrasive rock tumbling phase,

though not before she had another sneak-peek at the now shiny rocks.

Next week the polishing process begins,

I am already having difficulty sleeping in anticipation.

Moving more honestly on:

Now here is a strange thing:

I have been trying to figure out what these pine-cone cacti reminded me of for a long time.

Tephrocatus articulatus var. diadematus

This week if finally dawned on me, and it was very obscure.

It was the poor maintenance robot in the film AI that was destroyed in the Flesh Fair!…Phew, now I can sleep soundly once again,

Or can I?

As you may know, I have been trying to protect my soft leaf yuccas from the horrors of the

“evil weevil”

by administering copious amounts of diatomaceous earth sprinkled around the base of the plants, it appears to be working.

Unfortunately my yuccas have now developed another issue,

and it isn’t pretty. Several fungi, including Cercospora, Cylindrosporium, and Coniothyrium may cause leaf spotting like this in yuccas but thankfully they do not cause the widespread death of leaves.

I am sure this one contracted the yucca equivalent of the “Phage”  in the summer months when it received some overhead watering…remove affected leaves and discard.

This week has had me and my (in-house) pajama crew cleaning up insane amounts of leaves.

We gathered them up in buckets, transferred them to trashcans and piled them up wherever we could find space. I hate picking up leaves.

One personal pet peeve is cleaning out the hearts of the sagos,

this activity ranks on my irritation scale at a steady 9.5

It is really nice to have my pathways clear once again though.

Finally:

King Tut papyrus is still holding up well in one of my stock-tanks,

not bad form for January.

Rosemary is also doing a great winter job,

feeding the honey bees,

with it’s tiny flowers.

Sweet peas are on the boil,

and pink shrimps are ready for the barbie,

and my artemesia is once again looking healthy.

Driving around the Mueller area the other day, I saw this:

I initially thought these were dwarf conifers. When I realized it was in fact gray santolina or lavender cotton, I swung my steed around and snapped these shots.

Santolina chamaecyparissus

It reminds me of Scottish “heather” in a mass-planting like this. I will try and get some shots of it in bloom next summer…if I remember.

Photograph: Linda Engstrom

And to finish I am happy to report that Kumo is making a speedy recovery after his stomach surgery.

He is now stumbling and walking into things wearing his

collar of shame. 

Talking of dwarf conifers…

Inspirational image of the week:

Photograph from Foxhollow Garden, Dorset, England.

Stay Tuned for:

“Igniting the Cattails”

All material © 2012 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

Scary things agaves.

“OVATIFOLIA!”

Talking of being scared…

This was the scene shortly after Kumo had managed to rip the beak off his second mallard to get access to the stuffing. This is his:

“schave me from my-shelf” face. He is especially partial to the plastic quacking part.

After our recent rain, (yes we finally got a little), the moss and lichen on these moss boulders quickly reanimated.

This is my favorite type of rock to use in a landscape for a number of reasons;

the life,

The color,

and the shine.

I have recently moved quite a few tons of moss boulders into this back garden that I have just finished installing.

The homeowner was tired of trying to keep the turf grass alive and desired a more native and drought tolerant planting scheme to reduce water usage…perfect.

There was a lot of scale-inappropriate shrubbery and a rather random island that was filled with my favorite Asiatic ground cover,

of course this had to go…immediately.

This was the proposed design scheme. The grade rises toward the back wall so I opted for a natural retainer wall of…you guessed it, moss boulders. I initially considered limestone, but I required more height.

But first it has to look worse before it looks better, a rather disturbing phase if you are not accustomed to it.

At this stage there is a certain “Battle of the Bulge” or perhaps “Operation Market Garden”aesthetic going on, but thankfully it does not last long.

It was time to bring in the heavy artillery to lay a rather large array of moss boulders.

Here they are before they are leveled and orientated. After the tear out, the existing yucca now really stand out

And here is the final garden with decomposed granite and Tejas black gravel, back-filling the boulders and reducing erosion.

These miscanthus grasses worked out really well, catching the late afternoon dappled light.

Here is a panoramic view of the area. Taking out those overgrown shrubs against the house (the over-exposed area) really made the space feel so much larger and less claustrophobic.

Here is the newly planted replacement bed for those overgrown shrubs, that is a sabal major against the far fence and a sweet olive in-between more dwarf miscanthus for fragrance.

Back in the Patch:

One more shot of these fragrant mist flowers.

I just recently found out that these plants can tolerate shade…I had no idea.

One of my favorite plants at this time of year is the copper canyon daisy.

I lost all but one of my mature plants in this summers furnace, their replacements are providing some sporadic blooms.

Flowers are not a problem for the blackfoot daisies in my hell-strip.

Finally:

I have never seen so many tiny sryphid flies as this year:

They apparently like the strange gasoline odor of this epazote which was given to me from Cheryl over there at: http://consciousgardening.blogspot.com/

This Mexican herb is really good if you eat a lot of beans,

and develop some of this. (I decided to spare you the video clip).

It has been used in Mexican cuisine for thousands of years dating back to the Aztecs who used it for cooking as well as for medicinal purposes. The herb is poisonous in large doses.

On that (ahem) “note”:

Stay Tuned for:

“The Incredible Bulk”

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

“Was that you”?

“No, that was not me, that was you”

“I assure you it most certainly was not”…Wait, aren’t we the same person?…

…Kumo! Kumo!

Captain Enrique “Squirrel” Monastario has been waging war on the Patch, throwing discarded nut shells on me and my metal roof…I guess the pecans are finally edible. There have been many heated squirrel disputes of late over who has the chomping rights to these two nut-laden trees, sometimes forcing one of them out of the tree and very close to the sharp blades of …

Zorro’s feet, lying in wait at the base of my giant timber bamboo.

I have a rather ill-conceived and ridiculous theory that all the nuts that were buried by the squirrels last fall actually vaporized underground during this summers intense heat, making food for the squirrels very scarce. I have never seen such an intense pecan feeding frenzy:

I sweep this mess up every few days and if it continues,

IF IT CONTINUES…

“Relax amigo, I will will take care of this or my name is not Don Diego”

This is where Zorro takes refuge when his partner Kumo, plays a little too rough.

I have a suspicion that this magnificent Red-shouldered Hawk (thanks for the ID Mikael), who has been showing up recently on the top of some adjacent pecan trees also has his keen eyes on these squabbling squirrels, either that or my goldfish. Here is a rather interestingly disgusting fact…by the time they are five days old, nestling Red-shouldered Hawks can shoot their feces over the edge of their nest, no they really can. Bird poop on the ground is a sign of an active nest.

Hmm, I wonder…

My Weber…my brand new Weber!

“How very dare you”.

” Shhh, snicker, I mean cooo, coo”.

Moving disconcertingly along:

I found this moth on my deck and it looked exactly like an old leaf. You have to get up really close to it before you can see it is actually a

Walnut Sphinx

Amorpha Juglandis

 Rather strange that the caterpillars of these amazing creatures make squeaking sounds when disturbed.

Caterpillar Photograph: Seana Saxon

Even though we are once again in triple digits we must be finally entering fall as the grasses are starting to put on their annual display.

Red / purple fountain grass is one of my favorites.

Pampas is also pushing out plumes this week,

and this blooming Texas sage (aka the barometer plant) must surely be confused…a change of weather or temperature in central Texas?

I think not.

Honey bees were going berserk on it.

Talking of bees this baby bee caused a wee bit of drama the other day when my youngest halfling stood on it and got stung.

It took us a while to find it, it was so tiny. Poor little guys.

This week in the Patch…

A replacement stock tank goes in,

and order and leaks are now restored and watertight once again.

This sunflower was pecked to death and stripped of all its seeds in a single day.

I was hoping to save at least a few for next year.

Stay Tuned for:

“The Haunted Garden”

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

“Hey Dad, I can see all your dead plants from up here”.