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.

You can see why it is called Texas star hibiscus,

Hibiscus coccineus

and what an ornate and complex bloom it is, on the subject of blooms, this sunflower has taken on storybook proportions.

I planted a lot of different kinds of large sunflower seeds earlier this year but I think the super-dry conditions or perhaps the birds got to the them before they had a chance to grow. Even though I managed to grow just the one, it was well worth it.

I came across this intimidating insect next to a patio I am working on.  It was large and adorned some serious tribal markings, it was moving at a frenetic pace on the ground.

This is a cicada killer wasp,

“Sphecius speciosus”

or sometimes called a sand hornet, this large female was extremely busy digging in the earth.

She was digging a burrow beneath a live oak tree, no doubt a good source for future cicada hunting and gathering. Yes folks, I am afraid it is another one of those – I am going to paralyze you, drag you into a dark cave, then my offspring will slowly devour you stories.

After digging a nest chamber (which have been reported to be over a meter long), female cicada killers capture cicadas, paralyzing them with a sting, the female wasp then straddles it and takes off toward her burrow…

yee-haa!

This return flight to the burrow is difficult for the wasp (and I am sure no joyride for the cicada) because the cicada is often more than twice her weight. After putting the cicada in the nest cell, the female deposits an egg on the cicada and closes the cell behind her with dirt…Brrr. On a brighter note, these large wasps are generally non-aggressive towards humans. Still, I was taking no chances photographing this one.

Tiny voice: “Scared of a wasp now ESP?”

Be quiet Jeff and enjoy the ice cream that you are stuck in.

Staying on the subject of rather large insects I unearthed this female

Strategus aloeus julianus

or rhinoceros beetle and it was a monster. I threw a saddle over it and took it for a walk around the garden. These chaps are among the largest of beetles, reaching 60 millimeters in length, but are completely harmless to humans because they cannot bite or sting. Their common names: Hercules beetles, unicorn beetles or horn beetles refer to the characteristic horns borne only by the males of most species in the group.  The males use their horns for fighting (usually over food) and impressing a female. If a beetle is feeling threatened and cannot dig itself into the ground, it will make loud hissing squeaks.

“Scared me to death it did.”

The hissing squeak does not do anything but frighten a predator.

Okay that was bad…moving quickly to birds.

This family of doves perched in their “nest” on my Afghan pine, look totally ridiculous. These birds are not noteworthy for their engineering prowess when it comes to the art of nest-building. Oh no, in fact they appear to be totally rubbish at it, but they seem happy huddled together on their teetering platform. The whole scene is very:

JERRY: You ran over some pigeons? How many?
GEORGE: What ever they had. Miranda thinks I’m a butcher but i-i-it’s not my fault is it? Don’t we have a deal with the pigeons?
JERRY: Course we have a deal. They get out of the way of our cars, we look the other way on the statue defecation.
GEORGE: Right! And these pigeons broke the deal. I will not accept the blame for this!

These Monk Parakeets / Quaker Parrots must be nesting somewhere around the Patch as I keep seeing and hearing them squawking and squabbling, and do these birds like to squabble, one carry-on after another. These birds have naturalized in Austin for over twenty years.

This year is most certainly the year of the desert willow or Chilopsis. The hotter the temperatures, the dryer the drought, and the harsher the conditions the better this tree looks. I have never seen so much foliage and blooms as this year. This tree is actually not a true willow, it is called a willow only due to the shape of its leaves, the tree is actually a member of the Bignonia family.

Hummingbirds love it, and it is perfect for a hell-strip or anywhere that suffers reflected heat.

These feather grasses are now up to three years old and still going strong, they are currently in their brown phase awaiting some summer hair combing and trimming.

Or perhaps not.

Celosia is now springing up all over the place, this will put on a great fall show, attaining heights of 6+ feet.

Finally:

“Just like that, not like that, just like that.” 

It is the time of phlox in the Shire.

lots and lots of phlox,

what a great word…phlox.

This stock tank planted up with King Tut papyrus and burgundy canna lilies is also relishing the baking heat,

heat that is affecting some of us in some very strange ways.

Stay Tuned for:

“Eviction”

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

Inspirational image of the week:

I want this as a guest house at the end of the Patch. It is the phlox!

The anticipation of Christmas has definitely mounted this week in the Patch, our tree was once again pulled out of my garden shed and plugged in – (I love trees that are already pre-wired with lights…thanks China!).  Small hands eagerly grappled with shiny ornaments tucked tight in dusty boxes.  These nimble fingers made fast work out of decorating the tree to the point that it is now more reminiscent of an ornament than an actual tree. I was really happy that all the decorations were okay this year though, as I am every year since the rat incident of 2006, but I refuse to talk about that particularly “troubled time”.

To further the premature Christmas excitement, these eagerly awaited advent calendars arrived in the post from my parents in Scotland. Each December day has a small serrated window housing a chocolate and some small festive pictures, these calenders amazingly arrived exactly on the first day of December…the first boxes were immediately opened and the chocolates devoured in seconds, my youngest  then proceeded to have a complete meltdown, grappling with the whole concept of only one-a-day restraint.  He had apparently turned into Augustus Gloop.

A couple of days later I found a contraption with a blanket crudely strewn over it, in the corner of his room…

…he had secretly fabricated a rudimentary time machine, and according to his advent calendar, successfully transported himself five days ahead into the future, apparently eating the small chocolate treats steadily as he pushed the time-forward lever with his non-sticky hand. Naturally I destroyed the contraption in true Luddite fashion and the calender is now brought down on a daily basis from a very high place, although I am convinced he is planning something…I found these conceptual sketches yesterday hidden inside a “levitate in a day” book under his bed…

Moving on…

The new “don’t pick up the leaves until they have totally finished dropping” policy in the Patch is really stretching my patience to its limits!

“Hold…Hold…Hold…”

I want so badly to clean it all up. I am wading through leaves waste deep at this point, and I have lost my son so many times of late that I now attach a line of garden twine around his waist every time he goes out to play, a slightly inhibiting aggravation on his part, but a necessity. I refuse to lose him, and I am well aware that the Naboo are food deprived at this time of the year, if you catch my cannibalistic aversive drift.

I am not sure how much longer I can hold out with this new Patch clean-up policy?

“Ach! Typical! I canna bulieve ye would just gi-up mun…Ye canna…”

Oh Shut your pie-hole William.

The blue white hue on the margin of this agave is looking very frosty at the moment.

And etched into the side of the same agave – a ring wraith!

Some type of borer?

“Frodo you have to get the ring out of the Patch, the black riders are close”

Although the yard is knee-deep in decaying brown leaves and pecan nuts, I am taking some colorful solace in a few hotties still gracing these cold days and colder nights: It is the age of the pinks! (okay, enough Middle-Earth references for one post!)

Although a little disheveled looking this stock tank of King Tut papyrus with the now bright pink celosia around the perimeter is like a crackling fire (of Mordor) on these cool crisp days. The celosia colors have now transcended into the unreal, the psychedelic.  No color correction or saturation enhancement required on these photographs.

Ice plants always respond to the crisper cold weather conditions with their almost fake looking blooms, I am still trying to determine if I even like this plant aesthetically. It is an anomaly to me, should I like it?  Well it does bloom when blooms are stark, it does spread fast, but the question remains, do I really like it?  I cannot seem to decide.

The moisture in this photograph is naturally not natural, oh no, we have had no rain in Central Texas for quite some time – when DID we last have any substantial rain?

As a result, this is a common sight right now…

Plants are stressing like it is summer!  Cooler weather yes, but so little moisture, and winds drying things out even more.  I am watering my containers a lot more then I should be at this time of year, I caught this parched golden bamboo barely in the nick of time. My in-ground weeping bamboos have also felt the dry-pinch, requiring additional water to pull them through…it is December!

More pinks are emerging from my shrimp plants which are incredibly leggy this year.

And this…

“Queen Elizabeth”

Sedum spurium

or Dragon’s Blood Stonecrop is in her colorful prime – flushing dark red as the year draws to an end.

“Much better than that potato that other chappy brought me ESP!”

Finally…

My butterfly vine continues to amaze me with these bronze butterfly seeds.

Oh, and just in case you thought that you had escaped the Patch without something tickling your gag valve this week,

“I cannot look”…

you are naturally incorrect…

Yes folks those are eggs, I do not care to find out what horror is transpiring in this bucket grabbing scene.

On that wretched note I will leave you with a few more refreshing things I have meandered upon in the course of writing this post:

Inspirational images of the week:

Living Ornaments:

“Forest Floor” glass ornament created by San Francisco designer Flora Grubb. Lichens, moss, feathers and seeds cushion a living Tillandsia air plant inside a tiny glass ball.

And here are some unique gardening utensils from Cal Lane…but the decomposed granite would fall right on through!

Eyebrows would be raised if I turned up to an installation and pulled this wheelbarrow down from my trusty steed!

Okay just one more…

Anarchy In The UK?

Stay Tuned  for:

“Android Assassins”

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

This tomatillo is looking very cell like…

…a prisoner in its own membrane? And an early sign that Autumn is around the corner.

As we begin to emerge on the far side of the Texas summer, there are some new blooms waiting to take center stage.

My pride of Barbados flowers have all but gone, being replaced with purple and then brown curling seedpods.  My evergreen wisteria now only has a few small purple clusters on it to remind me of the once potent “Grandma’s closet” aroma (not that I spend much time in such places you understand).

It is the time for the sages to once again remind us that the year is drawing on with its first wisps of purple just now beginning to show.  This area has bounced back remarkably well considering the “Tahoe / house” incident and the trampling the area took as our house got repainted, such is the resilience of Salvia leucantha.  I cut these Mexican bush sages back earlier this year like I normally do, but then went in for a second, less aggressive snipping about a month ago, this has resulted in a much tighter habit than I usually achieve for this time of year. I was concerned that this might delay blooming, but it appears not.

Here are the long lasting flower heads last year. I have a lot of this fuzzy plant in the Patch, I have contrasted this softness in my new planting scheme with three agaves that, in a year or two, will rise up above this sea of purple, spears held high.

Moving on…

“Stand Still and Deliver!”

I tried to get a decent shot of this huge grasshopper, but obviously struggled.  The war paint markings on this insect were amazing but unfortunately every time I got close to it,  just as the shutter was about to release, off it would jump higher and higher into some Buddha’s belly bamboo, eventually becoming out of reach.  This was the best shot I got of it, it was enough to identify it as an “Obscure Bird Grasshopper”, (named because of their ability to fly rapidly over great distances).

An Old World species in this genus,

Schistocerca gregaria

is noted for its swarming and migratory behavior…it is the locust of biblical plagues.  Lucky for us the New World species are much less prone to swarming!  Judging by the size of this one I think is is a female (about 3 inches from head to wingtip) she likes to devour plants in the citrus family, such as wafer ash and lime trees. Bird Grasshoppers will however eat many different kinds of broad-leafed plants.

This dandy highwaylady also can deliver a mean bite with its powerful jaws, and If held by the back, they will readily kick like a mule with their muscular thighs, this is not good because these creatures adorn large spines on the underside of its legs, these will draw blood if they catch you.  I had no intention of messing with this one, even if I got close enough, which I didn’t.

The patch really has felt like the jungle this week…we have had the humidity, the mosquitoes, the occasional howler monkey? Oh, and I almost forgot…

…endless amounts of hacking through a large stand of bamboo. I love wielding my machete, even though it never seems to really work very effectively?  It is like being in an old black and white, deep jungle trekking Tarzan film…of course, as we know in these movies, it invariably ends up pretty bad for the greedy white man hunting and collecting elephant tusks, as it should.  In the movie I found myself starring in, tusks were substituted for giant timber bamboo culms, but the outcome was destined to be the same…and I am not referring to my odd posture that I am adorning, (I have been scalped by this gate way too many times),  or having an “accident” in my pants like this picture misleadingly portrays.  (I knew I should have gone to the bother of tying an iced turban)!

Lets just say that what was once my favorite large bamboo of choice is most definitely not anymore.  Oh no, after last winters prolonged freezes, all of my well-established timbers took a beating, I have left them until now to see if any of the culms would have any semblance of recovery, but alas…

“Completely dead those mature culms are, young pant wetter”.

Hey!

So I did what came naturally…

“I built…

You guessed it,

Twice the length of a man!”

You can see the dead culms before the felling began in the background on the above shot, a complete ugly mess.  Culms were chopped…

culms were trimmed…

…and ideas what to do with them were hatched.

Here are all the culms cut to length with a layer of weatherproofing sealant applied to make them last longer.

I strapped them all to this ugly metal fence that I plan on replacing…I need a few more culms to completely hide it, but you get the idea. From now on it is Buddha’s belly bamboo for me if I need the height and stature of giant timber bamboo, the bellies breezed through the cold snap.  I do not want to go through this jungle hacking nonsense again anytime soon. My timbers have pushed up some new weak growth, but after this escapade, my relationship with this mammoth grass has officially waned.

Other observations in the ESP this week:

A Patch Sprite.

Purple fountain grass and sotol still getting their groove on…and in the foreground,

purple heart flowers,  floating in their own boats.

This Arizona ‘blue ice’ cypress cools things down, offering the illusion of a rather large waterfall falling into this rather small stock tank…(must not look at the sticker, must not look at the sticker, must n…)

…while burgundy canna lilies continue to heat things up with their smoldering antics.

Some more salvia and pampas breaking into bloom.

Finally…

My datura continues to blow its own white trumpets, making these

wavering aquatic leechy wormy things in my papyrus stock tank perform an agitated dance.

What are these anomalies?  Can planarians survive in this environment?

I hope you can see them past the reflections! Oh, and he was right, the tadpoles did die.

On this rather disgusting note which I invariably seem to finish on,  enjoy some very odd:

Inspirational images of the week:

“Domsai is a tamagotchi for your desk. It is produced with craftsmanship in Nove, in the neighborhood of Bassano del Grappa (VI). Each Domsai has its own personality, each cactus has its own dome, tailor made and blowed, that differentiates it from the others”.

Stay Tuned  for:

“Painful Extractions”

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