Oh yes, I think I can officially say that I am ready for our bulk pick up to happen, as I am sure my neighbors are who have had to unfortunately look down on this rather hillbilly scene for the last few weeks.

“Dang, squirrel! And darn.”

I am convinced that these pallets are procreating, they have to be. There are definitely more stacked up with every passing day.

There are also more of these bog cypress leaves in my pond every day along with those strange unidentified “brains” I keep reporting and wittering on about. Today we all banded together to get to the bottom of the mysterious brains…today the experiment started:

I went into my shed and grabbed my white lab coat and notepad while my halflings got busy picking some of the larger specimen brains out of the pond.

There were some beauties…

…”Ack ack ack ack-ack”!

We placed the brains with their brain-stems facing down in a pot (it seemed logical), filled it with soil and returned the pot to the pond.

I will report next year, or as soon as something emerges from the damp soil.

All this talk of brains quickly turned to zombies,

Though to me he looked a lot more…

“Village of the Damned” than zombie.

Brrr…Moving On:

These suspended milkweed seeds were launching themselves in all directions the other day with our recent freshening breezes.

I snagged some and planted them in the ground in an attempt to increase their chances of germination.(snort)

Other notable events in the Patch this week…

Flowering loquats are covered in honey bees and my satsumas are the size of grapefruits.

This little tree only produced two satsumas this year as it focused all of its energy on staying alive during this summer’s drought. 

Here is the same tree two years ago with over a 100 satsumas on it (and a lot more rain).

Yucca filamentosa looks like the morning after a serious party, especially when backlit from a wintery sun. The leaf margins carry numerous white curled filaments which catch the light, hence filamentosa. 

Also should you find yourself out in the wild and cold, the flowering stalk of this plant is an excellent wood to use to make a friction fire because the wood of this yucca has one of the lowest temperatures for catching a flame. And, should you also be getting a bit funky in the odor department, the root of the plant can be shaved and used as a rudimentary soap to wash yourself, your clothing and hair.

“Kuuumooo”!

Here is a festive winter ground-hugging planting combination:

Santolina and plumosa fern.

And here is the latest addition to the Patch:

Ramie is one of the oldest vegetable fibers and has been used for thousands of years. It was used in mummy cloths in Egypt during the period 5000 – 3000 BC, and has been grown in China for many centuries. Ramie 

Boehmeria nivea

is commonly known as China grass, white ramie, green ramie and rhea, it is one of the group referred to as the bast fiber crops. The ramie plant is a hardy perennial belonging to the Urticaceae or Nettle family (leaves are a give away), which can be harvested up to 6 times a year.

I have no experience with this plant in central Texas…do you?

Finally:

I never really know what to expect when I look in my rear view mirror, in fact most of the time I try to ignore what is going on back there in an attempt to keep my blood-pressure from elevating. But these distinguished “gentlemen” were sufficiently ridiculous, it warranted a reverse in-car shot.

He was to be appropriately known as professor “Mad-Pants” and she, for whatever reason, became professor “Toddy”.

“Carpe diem”

Professor Toddy taking a leisurely and reflective fall stroll through the campus grounds and some waning purple fountain grasses.

Stay Tuned for:

“Tiddalik”

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

“I Think I Jinxed Myself” should perhaps be a more fitting title for this particular post!  Little did I know when I titled this post last week that I would a) wake up to a flat tire on my trusty steed b) end up having to buy a “new” tire c) find out a few hours later that the “new” tire also had a hole in it, and d) have to replace the “new” tire with another new “new” tire.

“The Wheels of Change” indeed.

Things are changing finally in Central Texas, nighttime temperatures are now occasionally dipping, something

my opuntia tree seems to be enjoying.

I have been hacking at this one’s lower limbs for quite some time to get it shaped up into a more vertical stature…

…it bares the cauterized war wounds of many an ancient battle with my trusty hook saw.

It does not matter how much you hack at this little asparagus fern, (which, like a lot of others, is not actually a true fern)

Asparagus setaceus / Asparagus plumosus

or Plumosa Fern

it always comes back.

Don’t be fooled by this fern’s delicate disposition, it is as hard as nails and tolerates anything the Texas weather throws at it. You can let it creep around other plants like I now do to offer contrast to broader leaf plants like this burgundy canna lily, (a pairing that works very well together) or you can be a little more ambitious with it as I was some years ago…

I planted two tiny plants against these bamboo poles, a couple of years later they resembled conifers.  The plant will grow in full sun to shade and it will spread, so watch out where you plant it.  It is also toxic and has thorns but other than that I personally like it. It would work really well if left to its own devices to climb over ornamental gates etc.
The onset of all my fragrant mist flowers and my

Barbados cherry blooming has created an eruption of these tiny sryphid flies in the Patch:

Allograpta obliqua

These aphid consuming, beneficial little hover flies are all over the place at the moment,

Also still blooming are the fall asters,

yellowbells,

and this shiny little ice plant that receded to almost nothing this summer but is quickly returning from between the rocks.

Moving On:

Remember my flatulent stock tank that burped and threw up on me last March? My halflings affectionately refer to this particular tank as “the poop-pond” due to it having Dillo Dirt in it.

I planted it up with small clumps of horsetail reed and threw in a couple of dwarf papyrus for good measure and said “let the battle begin”.

Eight months later and it has exploded, filling the entire tank. I would say this battle is well under way with perhaps the dwarf papyrus having the slight advantage.
Finally…

a front make-over:

Large sweeping pathways were created around both sides of this house for functional access and to visually draw attention to, and emphasize the grand entryway of the property.

Lots of Asiatic jasmine ground cover was removed (stay calm, stay calm, deep breaths, (subtle knee murmur)) along with the existing shrubbery that was getting rather long in the tooth.

In its place came a weed suppressed base of grey Tejas black gravel and a fresh new planting scheme, heavy on the prostate rosemary to cascade over the elevated retainer wall, the intent being something like this:

A mass-planting of bamboo muhly softens the edges of the walkway and more burgundy cannas are used in sunken stock tanks next to the entryway to pick up on the house trim color.

Stay Tuned for:

“Poking around the Pokeweed”

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

The spiraling seed heads on this miscanthus do look electrifying,

but the title of this post is in celebration of finally losing these:

For years now I have had two heavy gauge and extremely annoying extension cords running from a GFCI circuit on my back deck all the way down the side of my property to my ponds. Today this was all going to change,

Today I have the electricians coming!

Luckily for me when I first started to carve into the Patch to create planting beds, I laid conduit in preparation for this historic day. Here is the trench way back when:

Is that some grass I see?

A secondary trench was dug inside this one to take the pvc pipe down toward the end of the garden.

and here it is today all prepped and ready for the fixtures. These GFCI outlets come with a light fixture already attached to the top of them so I wasted no time in getting some eerie colors working in the Patch. Next step is to illuminate my post oak tree, more on this later.

Talking of eerie, the “brains” (as we commonly refer to them) have returned to the pond,   This year in larger numbers than ever.

They really have an effective design…the “brain” provides flotation whilst assuring the the “brain-stem” roots always hover vertically allowing them to catch onto something and root. Ingenious.

Could this be a baby Walska?

Something even more disturbing:

While I was laying some mulch down I caught the unmistakable, unhealthy aroma of a stink horn…and judging from the intensity of the stench it was a bruised one…which is never a good thing at any time.

Eyes darted here and there, scouring the earth for the evil monstrosity…where was it…where was it?

Had I knelt on it? Tell me I hadn’t knelt on it. I knew it must be close to me. I looked behind me to see Kumo proudly holding it in the corner of his mouth like a rotting cigar. Before I could even get out of the planting bed [LEAVE IT] he had scampered over and dropped it in the middle of his favorite flattened feather grass. [LEAVE IT!] He paused, looked at me, then got on his back and started to roll around on it. [Oh for heavens sake].

Bad, stinky Kumo!

Moving On:

Temperatures are now very pleasant in Central Texas, just right for dangling your toes in the pond. My goldfish seem to think they are Garra rufa, exfoliating feet and toes to the delight and squeals of the halflings.

Brrr!

There is a hazard to dangling one’s toes in a fishpond though…

rogue strands of oxygen weed.

This week has seen a steady flow of migrating Monarch Butterflies filtering through the Patch,

their favorite ports of call are butterfly weed Asclepias tuberosa (naturally) and some blue mist flowers I have in my front garden.

Oxalis has reemerged in the cooler weather and is flowering once again.

A moment of zen under the Mexican weeping bamboo.

Talking of weeping, my pecan trees are currently engaged in yet another rather annoying activity…this time dropping sweet sugar-water all over the place.

My new barbeque pit!

In the late afternoon sun you can actually see the sticky rain falling. 

This sparkling dandelion seed head was adhered to these leaves by the sugary substance.

Finally:

You didn’t think you could escape without seeing at least one very odd bug did you? 

Common Bagworm

Psyche casta

Bagworm moths build houses from all kinds of materials.  Each species designs and builds its own particular type of architecture, it is these structures that allow them to be identified. The Common Bagworm climbs on to plants and trees, but harvests wood from houses and sheds as well.

Inspirational sketch of the week:

http://www.morstudio.co/projects/entries/?id=5

Stay Tuned for:

“Little Monsters”

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

The sun…the heat index…the humidity, the drought, the dryness, the incessant moaning. It is tough in Texas this time of the year and we are only now entering our hottest month.

This Barbados beanstalk created a welcome brief eclipse.

Even this sun flower seems to have given up, dropping its head in the wake of yet another three-digit day.

And what do I do when the air feels like a blow torch and the heat becomes intolerable?

Hmm, not quite.

I start working up plans for this back garden.

The home owners were tired of the bare patches of turf that turned into mud whenever it rained but wanted to retain a good portion of grass for their dogs. They wanted to make the space more inviting and usable for entertaining and hanging out in.

This most certainly had to go!

  Being a standard rectilinear lot I immediately wanted to soften up the boundary fence and introduce a focal entertainment feature that would be large enough in scale to “eat in” to the overall proportions of the area, splitting up the space.

After agreeing on the design a plan of action was put forth, especially as it related to site access.

A chunk of the rear fence had to be removed for deliveries…

…of which there were many.  I always tell clients that it has to look worse before it gets better, as it can be quite shocking.

Roughing out the shapes and the first pallet of three paver bricks, (a slight miscalculation on my part). Note to self…apparently, like dirt, bricks also have their own individual laws of physics in that it always takes three times as many as what you initially calculate.

Bricks are laid,

planting beds are deconstructed and reconstructed. Can you tell it is a little bit on the toasty side?

Oh yes, the difference from the shade to venturing into the midday Texas sun to work can be a life threatening adventure.

Two weeks, gallons of sweat and a few boxes of Epsom salts later,

it was completed. It was amazing how much dirt had to be excavated to flatten the grade for the circular brick paved area.  The curved retainer wall works great as an informal seating area.

What was once bare dirt. The Tejas black gravel and silvermist flag are one of my favorite combinations and it works well to visually reflect the shadows and forms of tree limbs.

  The corner beds are grounded with large moss boulders and planted with grasses and other drought tolerant plants. (As a rule I do not usually plant at this time of year, but this garden has an extensive sprinkler system and coverage).

Whenever possible I look for for boulders with overhangs like the one in the left picture for added dramatic affect. The sculptural desert willow will eventually soften up this whole left corner. The two large corner miscanthus will take care of the other.

This moss boulder even came with its own cactus growing in a small pocket of dirt.

Back in the Patch:
and under some rare but very welcome cloud cover.

My eldest decided to clean off our bench today, and I didn’t even ask her!

That is her fairy house on the right (under the arch) that over the course of the year has become more and more ramshackle to the point that the nice fairies moved out and the redneck ones adorning tattooed wings moved in. I started to notice tiny beer bottles and toy car-casses dotted around the front of the tiny property as well as some architectural improvisation of their own:

Unlucky for them today was the day of their eviction, the house was also apparently on today’s cleaning list.

She was not the only one on a mission today.

As soon as I suggested a lick of paint for her fairy house her eyes sparkled, work began immediately.

Accompanied by a traditional Naboo tribal dance (with obvious Maori influences).

The modernistic house was reopened with some glittery pomp and circumstance (and a welcoming lily).

Now to see who will move in.

Finally:

Inland sea oats are just starting to take on their brown fall coloration.

My pinecone cacti have started to grow hair, and my 

Mexican weeping bamboo seems to just keep getting larger. I may have to take out the inner bricks at this rate.

I will leave you with this moment of zen:

Not.

Stay Tuned for:

“All that Glitters is not Gold”

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