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:

Finally Christmas!

This pyramid candle really helped to bridge the long wait for Christmas having tiny gifts embedded into it. The prospect of retrieving some “Pharaoh’s treasure” fueled her imagination for hours…okay 4.5 minutes.

“Daddy? How long do candles take to burn?”

“Hmmph?…Zzzz”

The first eardrum shattering 7am squeals started when they both ripped open some junior golf clubs from their grandparents in Scotland.

She could not wait to try them out on the range a couple of days later.

He got a retro post-apocalyptic phaser,

that made the most annoying obnoxious sounds imaginable. (The psychologically damaging part of the holidays)

What was I thinking? Oh yes…cool design.

This made him very happy.

She got her…

La La Loopsie doll,

a not-so-Easy Bake oven,

and her long awaited rock tumbler that has been tumbling a bunch of rocks since Christmas day. It takes a month to turn sharp raw stones into polished gems.

We took a sneak peak at them five days into the coarse abrasive phase (naturally), and already the stones were significantly smoother.

Even Kumo got a prime steak chop on Christmas day!

He devoured most of it before frantically running around with a really desperate expression on his face, looking for a place to bury the remainder.  For dessert he apparently opted for a large chunk of plastic attached to a string, this gastronomic episode sadly landed him in hospital requiring an hour-long stomach operation.

Poor Kumo.

He is still in the hospital and doing a little better, we all have our fingers crossed that he will pull through and make a full recovery.

Moving Sadly On:

Rosemary is looking particularly healthy and festive after finally getting some rain,

and so are the weeds. This green clump seemed to spring up overnight.

I planted a couple more Plumosa Ferns at the base of my steel gate a few weeks back,

and they have almost doubled in size with the recent moisture.

A visually frosty and festive scene courtesy of a neighbors China-berry and my Blue Ice cypress

Cuppressus arizonica var. glabra ‘Blue Ice’

And now we are having clear crisp days,

days perfect for…

lighting large fires with my new

“Bear” knife and magnesium striker.

Fires that keep the wild ESP cats at bay.

It has been a busy two weeks off school for the halflings,

I immediately got them to work on gathering seeds from this year’s rather poor crop of celosia.

It is tedious work but the challenge of getting the emptied husks into a bucket on the floor helped relieve the monotony, or so I thought.

“I am Sooo tired of shelling celosia”?

“Me too sis, I am ready to annoy everyone with my phaser again”.

Hey you two…did I say we were on a break?!

Finally:

A new “visitor” dropped into the Patch pond cypress tree this week…

Oh stop it!…It is an owl…just an owl!

Stay Tuned for:

“Just Leaf it Alone”

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

Happy New Year from us all in the Patch!

River Walk : San Antonio

And have a great “Bells” to all my family and friends in the Scottish borders:

I learned something new today.

I learned that the “French Fork” facial hairstyle has absolutely nothing to do with gardening but was named after the utensil the French use for eating escargots.

They call it “fourchette à escargot”…and I keep threatening my daughter that I plan on growing and adorning one, just to push her buttons…(the facial hair, not the fork).

The French Fork is a little too straightforward for my aesthetic, but these on the other hand, these will turn heads!  You could even elaborate and install tiny pots into the circles and plant them up with some trailing Sedum morganianum…it would be magnificent. Imagine one of these combined with an iced turban at a stop-light.

A large client install and an upcoming garden bloggers shindig at the Patch has successfully depleted our supply of Epsom Salts and Aleve, but thankfully it is cooler and we have even had some rain, yes rain!

It was such a rare and exciting event he forgot to put his pants on in his eagerness to get outside at the crack of dawn.  (Stray sock courtesy of Kuminus Fangstratus).

This is his “Oh boy, I am in trouble again” face.

I spent the entire day working out in the rain, whistling and humming annoying tunes to myself.

The rain really helped to perk up everything, the first to react to the introduction of the strange wet substance was the sad loquats and

my hoja santa.

White stone-crop eagerly drank-up the moisture and doubled its dimensions overnight.  You have got to hand it to these tiny succulents and their ability to handle prolonged drought.

Opuntia paddles thickened,

and satsumas ripened,

but oooohh how the artemesia looks bad. Look at them now!…

…They look like a louisiana swamp cypress trees, yes that is what they are, swamp cypress trees, very small ones…dwarf in fact.

With that confusion all cleared up,

I decided to do some clearing up myself.  With the luxury of a steady rain falling on me, I pulled out the remains of my ghost plants which strangely made me want to go and eat blackened soft-shell crabs at Pappadeaux.  Which I did that very evening!

Naturally she wore her new, favorite dress. She has been devastated since…

Her favorite pizza restaurant closed.

I now fear that I may never get to implement a scheme for that strange sarcophagus planter.

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/07/%e2%80%9cgarden-coffins%e2%80%9d/

With the rain and cooler temperatures, naturally I had to try out some new additions in the Patch, like this strangely named

Agave potatorum,

‘Kichokan Marginata’

or (Dwarf Variegated Butterfly Agave).

It looks like a variagated Agave parryi and I like it.

It is a small growing agave to 12 inches tall by 18 inches wide with short gray leaves margined with pale yellow streaks and blood smeared spines. Another new variegated addition to the Patch is this Hydrangea,

I have never tried growing them before so I have to give it a try.

And this one was listed on my receipt as just “plant” anyone know what this is? 

Can you tell this was an impulse purchase?

What great marginal frosting to the leaves.

Yes it has been quite the variegated week.

This sabal major unfurling a new frond caught my attention – very whale like.

And what is this?

Flowers in the Patch?

I think you can guess who was behind that chrysanthemum container.

Finally,

plant of the week has to be this desert trumpet vine which is gradually spreading down my fence line.

Stay Tuned for:

“It’s Electrifying!”

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

This may take a while to load.  Pause it, let it load, go have a cup-of-tea, then check out the hilarious asymmetrical mustache, this is the one for me.

“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.