Big voodoo no-no’s:

• If you lay a broom across the doorway at night, a witch can’t come in and hurt you.
• Having a woman visit you the first thing on Monday mornings is bad luck for the rest of the week.
• Don’t borrow or lend salt because that is bad luck.
• If you sweep trash out of the house after dark you will sweep away your luck.
• Don’t shake a tablecloth outside after dark or someone in your family will die.
• To stop a Voodoo spell being placed upon you, acquire some bristles from a pig cooked at a Voodoo ritual, tie the bristles into a bundle and carry them on you at all times.
• If a woman sprinkles some salt from her house to yours, it will give you bad luck until you clean the salt away and put pepper over your door sill.
• If a woman wants her husband to stay away from other woman, she can do so by putting a little of her blood in his coffee, and he will never quit her.
• If a woman’s husband dies and you don’t want her to marry again, cut all of her husband’s shoes all in little pieces, just as soon as he is dead, and she will never marry again.
• You can give someone a headache by taking and turning their picture upside down.
• You can harm a person in whatever way you want to by getting a lock of his hair and burning some and throwing the rest away.
• You can make a farmer’s well go dry by putting some soda in the well for one week, each day; then drawing a bucket of water out and throwing it in the river to make the well go dry.
• Never wear the same iced turban more then two consecutive summer days or you will certainly get involved in an automobile accident.
  

In Voodoo spells, the “cure-all” was very popular among followers.  The cure-all was a Voodoo spell that could solve all problems. There were different recipes in Voodoo spells for the cure-all; one recipe was to mix…

naturally, with sulfur and honey.  The mixture was placed in a glass, which then had to be rubbed against a…

and then the mixture was required to be sipped slowly…I would imagine so!

This little spider looked like it was wearing a serious voodoo mask.  These tiny spiders have large eyes considering the size of their bodies and are very active hunters, their excellent eyesight is used for stalking prey.  Before pouncing on the victim, jumping spiders attach a line of silk from which they can dangle should they fall.

Here is a diagram depicting exactly how these little creatures have evolved to their all-encompassing vision:

Not much gets by this chap.

Like a drone on an alien moonscape, very martian.

Their well-developed internal hydraulic system extends their limbs by altering the pressure of body fluid within them.  This enables the spiders to jump without having large muscular legs like a grasshopper.  Most jumping spiders can jump several times the length of their body.

This photo shoot was going well until I made a sudden lumbering movement due to the circulation being cut off in my left leg trying to get some decent shots.

At which point it turned and decided to jump directly onto the lens of my camera, I got this shot in as a panicked reaction, then it appeared over the top edge of the camera right next to my face,,,and silhouetted against the sun, it looked 10 x its size… a customary conniption naturally ensued, complete with camera-drop, which was actually more of a throw then a drop. Jumping spiders will turn to examine objects like my camera with the more accurate anterior median eyes, with which they identify the interloper as prey, natural phenomenon, possible threat, or potential mate.  This leads them to behave in a manner suggestive of curiosity, since they are highly visual creatures that use their anterior median eyes to assess objects of interest, they must, by necessity, bring anything of interest into their visual field, including my face.

“Lettin’ a tiny spider get you all r r r rilled up ESP, you need to chill in the Patch and get me some of dat Jimson weed”.

How about you tryin’ some of dat toothpaaaste?

Remember my puzzling imploding and mealy tomatillos?

This was my harvest before I took great delight in pulling out the shriveled plants that have annoyed me for ages.

Zanthan Gardens http://www.zanthan.com/gardens/gardenlog/ suggested that I may be picking them too late. I took her advice and even though the fruit was not at all close to filling their husks I picked a few and cut them open…they were perfect, small but good.

This batch did go on to make a great spicy salsa.

My celosia is creating a shimmering burgundy and white hue in the front of the Patch, many of these plants are listing after the recent winds. I will put up with them a little while longer.

Fire and ice.

With temperatures ducking down low at night the first frost damage is visible, yes folks it is time once again for the traditional hanging of the green hoja santa hankerchiefs…

This is the first plant in the Patch to visually inform me that it got cold the night before. Some other plants appear to relish the cooler night temperatures…

more artemesia and

ghost plant always seem to have a spring in their roots when temperatures dip.

Fatsia japonic getting ready to bloom, surprisingly there is little fly activity so far this year. These blooms are usually completely covered in flies even at this stage.

“Hey, I have been busy dealing with my loosening fingernails”! 

Err…Brrrr, Jeff!

The cactus fruit on this opuntia has obviously not yet been discovered by the Naboo, it is the traditional drum preference of the tribe.

Bluebonnets on the rise.

Finally:

A visit to Inner Space Cavern…

We went down a dark tunnel, some small knuckles turned white, and little faces got very serious as the light dimmed.

Almost immediately we were in another dimension. It is amazing to think dreary I35 was right above us, if you listen carefully you can hear the 18 wheelers very quietly above, two very different worlds so close together.

The best part of the day was some good old-fashioned panning for gold:

It is time, emotionally prepare yourselves:

Oh yes, the awful moment has finally caught up with us I am afraid…I can barely bring myself to embed it…b…bu…but, well I am afraid it just has to be done – this is a voodoo post after all, it would, COULD not be completed without this “dodgy moment” from a rock legend (edited for you and me both garner) :-)

Inspirational Images of the week:

I am by no means a great proponent of having a large expanse of lawn, but if you do have a propensity for the dark St Augustine side, this intriguing product just may be somewhere in your future garden shed…

From the designer:

“The grass that is cut is considered to be the useless remainder while cutting grass. The product “Muwi” benefits the third party in numerous ways by the act of cutting grass in order to create fair grass. “Muwi” first acknowledges the entire size of the land and automatically cuts the grass. The cut grass, which is created upon cutting the grass, is stored inside. As the cut grass begins to accumulate inside the machine, “Muwi” constructs and compresses the cut grass into two types of blocks. Then this cut grass is no longer a remainder that needs extra efforts to be thrown out or cleaned up. It rather becomes balls for children to play with or a chair to sit on or any other opportunity. These newly created blocks give care without even realizing it. Furthermore, after these blocks are used and left behind, they naturally go back to its neighboring nature in time. It is circulated again through nature and gives nature and us the natural consideration”.

Discs can be used for compost.

Designer: Yuli Sung

Stay Tuned  for:

“The Golden Ticket”

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

What on “earth” was I thinking?

I previously had stopped my hell-strip design escapades selfishly, at the edge of my own property line, and visible line from my front porch…out of sight…out of mind!  I quickly realized that it looked totally and completely ridiculous from across the street!  Like an 80′s half haircut!

The house next door to me is currently unoccupied, so I thought mmm? Why not?  I trudged to my shed for yet another Hell-Strip onslaught to finally finish what I had started.  Like anyone was likely to complain as I removed another swath of weed and rubbish ground?  Actually the ground in front of my neighbor’s house, was so much better then the compacted Terra-Firma in front of the Patch. The recent rains once again made it easier to turn over the soil.

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

Oh yes, I was performing some guerrilla gardening on the East-Side, and my Hell-Strip espionage was in full shoveling swing.

“Hell Strips are no joking matter ESP, remember that dreadful green-finger incident some years ago?”

My Hell-strip continues to grow, maybe I will just continue down the entire street, why stop here?

Oh I will tell you…

that’s why.

While I was nibbling away in here I could not resist pruning up this crepe myrtle and palm, and just why did I do this AFTER big brush pick-up? I continued the mounding into this area also, oh yes… I will have more artemesia mountains.

As I was excavating the site, I unearthed this…a female Boll’s sand roach (thanks for the ID Daniel) at <whatsthatbug.com@gmail.com>

Arenivaga bolliana

The downy females have no wings and burrow in the dust under houses and in natural rock shelters where they feed on packrat droppings, of all the strangest things.

This female is dragging her oothica or egg case, a behavior pattern characteristic of most cockroaches.  My eldest hobbit kept asking…what is it dragging daddy, look it is dragging something, what IS that? (repeat 16 times). Brrrr!

While I am on the subject of this Hell-strip, I have to warn you about trowels that have these…screws. Have these people never heard of co-molding techniques?  I bought this trowel after my old and trusted digging steed (with no screws) mysteriously vanished a couple of months ago, (I suspect it is at the bottom of one of my ponds).  After I had gone around the curb to clean out all of the weeds sticking to the edge of the hell-strip, these screws were once again loose, causing the whole trowel to rattle…this gets really, really annoying! The trowel should just come with a small screwdriver already tethered to it.

Okay, calm down, deep breaths…inhale in through the nose, exhale slowly through the mouth…and relax.

Moving on…

I have been waging war on this Vitex for years now, it is finally turning into the large shrub / small tree, that I always wanted. It sort of looks old-fashioned and fits aesthetically with our 1890′s house.  Although it does not compare to the trowel on the annoyance graph, this tree will keep you busy.  It always grows up annoyingly from the base (as you can see) and needs a lot of up-pruning to keep it in check and good form.  Insects swarm over the subtle purple-blue blooms at this time of year.

This purple verbena has also brought in its fair share of insects and small gazelles into the Patch, what?

Is it a flying rodent? A tiny pony perhaps?

Hemaris diffinis

or Snowberry Clearwing

These large hawk moths are diurnal, that is, active during the day; they are most often seen nectaring at flowers like this one. They hover and dart about, flying both backward and forward just like hummingbirds, but are actually mimicking bumblebees.

Hawk / sphinx moths are often mistaken for hummingbirds and bumblebees because of their similarities in size and feeding habits. Adult sphinx moths have a long, straw-like “tongue,” called the proboscis, which they keep curled under the head. They use it to suck nectar from the flower. The nectar is rich in sugar, which fuels the energy required for hovering, and avoiding having clear photographs taken of it.

Looking like something from a coral reef the new silver growth on this sago palm develops fast considering how slow the plant grows.  While I was taking this picture the little piece of dirt on the front right frond appeared to move, see it?…I moved in closer…

Oh yes it was moving alright, and quite fast considering all of the “junk” it was lugging around in it’s trunk.  Oh and tell me that is not a roaming eye at the bottom, peering out from under the trash canopy! I think it is!

“Oh very funny ESP!”

Could this be lacewing larvae?

Things noticed this week in the vegetable Patch

Amaranth is on the rise…

…and court jester squash blooms are all over the place, sneaking over pathways, I am constantly tucking them back into their designated beds.

I cannot wait to try these Kungpao peppers.

Finally…

I cut the seed heads from my Gopher plants

euphorbia rigida

today and naturally all of the white blood began to flow. All parts of this plant, including the seeds and roots are poisonous.

“I would never try zis”

Gophers should not be planted near fish ponds as the sap can be harmful to fish if their white blood is spilled.

Inland sea oats are in the process of developing their iconic seed heads.

“Whisper, whisper whisper, Naboo tribe..whisper whisper…The Germinatrix whisper…visiting the Patch…whisper, whisper…photo exhibition in Crimson…how dare you turn your back on me?”

Nothing good can come from this congregation of shiny gossips.

Stay Tuned for:

“I do like to be beside the seaside”

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

This young feather hugger is totally into the feather grass, it jumps from clump to clump hugging and hiding under it.

This cat, according to it’s collar, is called “Nina Coconut,” and it seems like it has adopted the Patch as it’s playground, at least for the time being.

It can also scale my Douglas Fir in seconds to the delight of my youngest hobbit who thinks this is fantastic. It really is quite funny the way it sits on the small branches watching all the goings-on in the Patch with sharp head movements.

These Mexican feather grasses have supplied me with a good crop of babies that have been transplanted all around my pathways.  What I have left should be just enough for my front garden endeavors. The loquats are all having a simultaneous growth spurt right now.  The paler green new growth looks great set against the mature darker foliage.  The cloud-like Arizona cypress, ‘blue ice’ (left) has aromatic, blue-gray leaves/needles that are flecked with white resin. I love this tree and look forward every year to it developing chocolate brown cones, but so far none have ever materialized.  This cypress prefers full sun, and thrives especially well in hot, dry environments like Austin.  It has a silvery blue color all year round, I love the way this one looks reflected in my feeder pond. The tree gets up to 50ft tall.

Imagine one of these in a hell-strip, under-planted with a mass of artemisia , now that would be a silver statement!

Talking of the feeder pond, this body of water was recently the venue for the “2010 H S R”.

“Husk Sailing Race”.  These bamboo husks with their post oak leaf sails work great, flying across the pond on the slightest of breezes.

“That looks like fun Huck”!

“It sure does Tom.”

I did notice this strange bit of oily something-or-other floating on top of the water, perhaps one of the sailing vessels had developed a leak in it’s fuselage?

New martian growth in my main pond

March Kale Felling:

She planted this Kale when it was about an inch tall, it was barely visible above the soil. Today she used the big-girl snippers and cut it down for dinner. There was an element of sadness associated with cutting it down though, I had to keep telling her that she grew it to eat it, so we all could eat it, she just kept saying…”next week, we will eat it next week.” She had grown quite attached to having it around apparently.

And the light shoneth down on the cut kale and peace and order returned the Patch.

Who am I kidding…naturally the freshly cut kale started an immediate fight…“Its mine!“ “No Its mine!” “Get off”! “Its mine” (Repeat until nerves are completely frayed, and temporary insanity has set in.)

The kale was made into an Asian noodle dish, and the grower ate so much of it!  This was really surprising as it had quite a bitter taste, just goes to show, food always tastes better if you grow it yourself.

The warmer weather brought out the bees on this blooming rosemary today. He kept insisting that the bees needed a “drinky” from his watering can, which was just an excuse to pour water on a few of them. I grew and wrestled this prostrate rosemary over a cedar carcass while it was young.  I am now testing a theory with another young plant to see if this actually forces the plant into a higher growth habit.  This one has turned into a monster, it spent the first two years of it’s life braced painfully up on the side of a cedar stump. My theory is that once it has been forced skyward in it’s formative years, it remains like this when mature?

Here is my young test subject…Mohahahaha!

On a closer inspection of the interior I was shocked to find the wreckage of this yellow convertible hung up in it’s interior branches. A Naboo tribal member on a joy-ride perhaps? I couldn’t be sure.

“O,o, makes me so o,o, angry…I did warn them it was a stick-shift.”

Have the tribe succumbed to modern society to the extent that they are now using sports cars to circumnavigate their territorial boundaries? I scoured the ground around the wreck for tiny bodies, but I naturally found nothing.  And why the random, angry, Naboo-speaking monkey? I have no idea.

Disturbed, I looked up to see this dwarf conifer blooming it’s very strange flesh colored oddities…this was no comfort.

And finally, (drum roll),

the patch has had a face-lift:

From a flaking white and horrific aqua, to shades of green and brown, oh yes we are all very excited. Spot the hobbit face in the right picture?

The stock tank where the Chevy Tahoe hit will be moved around in front of the now painted electrical boxes (flattened side against the house, naturally)…Well I may as well take advantage of it. I plan to stain the concrete foundation a dark brown to match the window trim. Not quite finished, but it feels so much more Patch-like already!

The containered golden bamboo culms and foliage look amazing set against this green color. An added bonus.

Blast from the Past:

Stay Tuned for:

“Toad in the Hole”

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

“Is there anything left alive in there”?  “Look how brown everything is”. “Is that a frozen Naboo tribal member stuck on the Botox lady’s lip”? “This is serious”.

Central Texas is back once again in the grip of yet another cold spell, I knew we were not going to get away with just one killer freeze this year.

I am just really glad that I did not clear out all of the leaves from the top of the hundreds of agave pups that I planted when my agave stalked bloomed over a year ago.  It seems this insulating thermal blanket is performing well, when you consider the mushy state of all the agaves in pots that were sitting out in the Patch unprotected…

It is not a pretty seaweedy sight!  The ones under the leaves are actually looking pretty good, but I will keep an eye on them for any sign of them rotting under their brown blanket.

And the less said about the poor old browned sago palms the better.  Even the poor Botox lady has had more cold temperatures than she can endure, she now resembles one of the survivors on the movie “Alive”, I won’t mention her frost bitten lip. She is also having a hard time getting her words out, something that right now I am appreciating.  All my sago palms are still alive though so I should probably not complain.  I have seen so many younger ones around Austin that are now corpses in their own container coffins. RIP.

So what is the best thing to do when the cold creeps into the ahem,…bones?

“Pull a ridiculous face like this ESP ? (strikes pose)… long-johns perhaps”?

No Dr McCoy…

some mindless moving of rocks from one place to another of course.

This area has been irritating me for longer than I care to remember.  These sunken Home Depot stones, I have to say, I have come to hate.  What started out as a “mmm, thats quite nice, look how they form a circle and frame the stock tank like that,” to… “those have to be the most ugly and badly laid bricks ever to grace humanity.” They also give me an unpleasant “commercial” taste in my mouth, oh no, this was going to have to change, and change it will today.  I looked around the Patch and started to find a bunch of buried river rocks hidden under piles of leaves around my pond area, rocks that were about to disappear due to the natural passage of time and debris build-up.  I had rediscovered them just in the nick of time.

I decided to leave the Home Depot rocks exactly where they were and just built up these rocks on top of them (shhhh), with a little help from my day laborer, naturally,  it worked out a treat. This area is slowly starting to work, the silver color of the feeder tank and the blue river rocks reference the color of the agave and Arizona cypress ‘Blue Ice’ tree.  The dark blue of the container and background piece of fencing adding depth to the scene.

And looking from the other side, a mirrored agave (a pup) and more dark blue from the “fish on the hill.”

Mmm, to remove this flagstone or not? What do you think?

Now… if I can only find a way to remove that label from the stock tank I will sleep well again, knowing that this area has been fully addressed, at least for now.  I am a firm believer that the adhesive used on these “Callahan’s” tank labels actually was reversed engineered from…

“Click, clack, chirp, chirp fuddy dunster” …or translated:  “Look, He has discovered our rather stubborn adhesive George, our master plan is working.  All he needs to do now is analyze it’s molecular structure, only then will he reveal the true secret of the…….!”

I cannot believe how many of these river rocks were hiding in the center of the Patch.  I need quite a few more to cover this entire area, but you get the general idea, very Brighton Beach…anyway I feel better.

Feeling cold? I strongly suggest hauling a bunch of river rocks from one place to another, it really does work.

While I was in this ancient, moving rock, Egyptian mode, I did notice a bunch of these tiny grasses springing up down the edge of my moss boulders that line my pathways.  Yes, my Mexican feather grasses have sown a new generation, and I cannot wait to transplant them all around the patch.  I love this little grass.  I will wait until these babies get larger in the granite before digging them up and reorganizing them into positions more appropriate.

A plant that has remained greener than green despite these harsh ungreening conditions has been this containerized horsetail reed.

Equisetum hyemale

Backlit from the low winter sun, it seems like it is in its prime right now, so green and irritatingly (to the rest of my plants,) healthy. The evergreen stems are particularly noticeable in winter, providing a welcome relief from all things brown. They also make the best Harry Potter wands available anywhere in the Diagon-Alley-Patch.

“Now you tell me”.

The blush on these small cacti seems to have intensified this winter.

So-far-so-good on the barrel cactus front, these lethal anemones appear to be holding up to Jack “irritating” Frost pretty well. Got to love that hat, I bet she keeps tortillas under there!

Can you be anymore irritating!

I will finish up with another rather sharp character…

…and a crisp story in the Patch…

Inspirational image of the week:

Office garden pods. What a great place to compose a post!

http://www.officepod.co.uk/

Stay Tuned for:

“Bottom of ze Barrel”

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