The first water lilies of the year have bloomed this past week,  I have both hardy and tropical varieties in my pond.
This shot is the inside of my ‘Texas Dawn’ hardy lily.

My tropical variety is always a little behind.
All the lily gazing drew my attention to the rest
of the pond, and to the sudden overabundance
of this little oxygenating plant.

Elodia is a member of the frog’s-bit family Hydrocharitaceae. The plant
is also known as Canadian water pest, and as the name suggests the plant is very cold hardy, and can be quite aggressive once established. The plant very rarely blooms so I was very happy to capture this tiny flower on it’s tiny stalk. My fish have been struggling over these plants to get to rogue pieces of fish food, I decided it was time to do a little thinning. I actually lost a fish on this plant last year when it got a little too aggressive with it’s attempt to reach a tasty morsel.

“Don’t put me in the compost bin”! (tiny voice)
Looking like a scene from the movie The Secret of Roan Inish these piles of “pond seaweed”
cleared a good portion of the pond.  The fish would not leave me alone as I was leaning full
stretch over the pond, they seemed happy at the new space that I was creating in their habitat.
All of this green goodness went straight into my compost bin, I am sure it is jam packed with
nutrients, and will be great when returned to the soil.

The pond looks really clear right now, but I am keeping a very close eye on the toad situation this year.
I do not want a repeat of this nightmare: http://east-side-patch.livejournal.com/11079.html
The Texas Gulf toads have already started their banshee screams on our warmer evenings.

Can you believe how fast the cat tails have grown back!  It seems like yesterday that I cut them all the way back to their potted ground.

Now onto issues of a terrestrial nature. It has been a really odd week this week in the patch in terms of discovering very odd things, both up high and below ground. This first one looks like it has been staged, but I assure you it was not. I was inspecting my oldest Giant Timber bamboo at the far end of my yard.

I observed new growth emerging and then noticed these “cracks”. I looked around to see about 50% of all the culms had these fissures to a lesser or greater degree.

I can only hypothesize that it is
the movement and stresses
caused by strong wings that
has caused this?
This particular bamboo is more
exposed than my other ones.
Anyway I thought this was a little odd, but it paled in comparison to looking up and seeing this:

“Bamboo cookies”.
How did it get there? Why hadn’t something eaten it? Was someone throwing these as Frisbees?
What are the chances of it getting caught up in my bamboo?, the mind boggles. I walked away puzzled and started pulling on some of that annoying little ivy weed (you know the one that always snaps when you try to extract it)  while I contemplated further the paratrooper cookie.

The only plant I detest as much as bermuda.

I grabbed a weedy vine that was a little thicker than the rest,
I do not know the name of this vine, but it has a very unique
aroma when you mess with it, kind of like neem, anyone
know what this is?  I get lacerated every year pulling it out
of my pampas grasses. I pulled and the vine got thicker
and thicker, then, out of the ground popped this unearthly
plants entrails:

“Freeeeeedom”.

Look at this!
It looks like it should be in a modern art museum. Here is the stinky foliage to help with an ID. This vines innards and the mental image of the bamboo cookie, (which I could not seem to mentally shake), for some reason inspired me to start work on my agave stalk “instrument”. I was craving a little bit of sanity.

I went over to the side of the housewhere the “beanstalk” had been laid to rest. I hoisted it up and it was quite a mess, a roach haven, complete with clotted dead leaves, it was still host to thousands of dying pups. It is quite staggering how long these pups have survived on the dead stalk.

Here is the beanstalk blooming last year, shortly before I climbed it, stole a golden egg laying chicken from the resident giant in the castle at the top of it, and chopped it down in my hasty retreat. And here is the scary, matted zombie now. Brrrr… the stuff of nightmares. The people across the street looked on in disbelief as I wrestled it and finally propped it up against the side of my truck. The scene all looked very redneck, especially when I returned from my shed wielding my three foot machete. I proceeded to start hacking at it with a mad grin on my face, taking pictures every once in a while, the people across the street disappeared into the sanctuary of their home.

The machete made quick work of taking the pups off the host, can you believe how many
pups were still on this thing! I now have a mass agave grave next to my house!

The finished instrument sounds like a cross between an alpine horn, a didgeridoo and someone
just humming into an old agave stalk.
And now I promise I will never ever mention this again.

All the loquats have responded well to the recent spell of wet weather. Looks like lots of fruit this year.
I tried one yesterday and it was sweet…

It seems I was not the only one enjoying these fruits! I planted this pit, out of curiosity.

Other springing developments this week in the patch:


Pink evening primrose, Oenothera speciosa taken shortly after the rains. Pink evening primrose comes from the south-central United States. It is native to the rocky prairies and savannas of the lower Midwest. The wiggly bits that stick out (stamens) look like naan bread, click on the right image, they do!
I think I need to eat, immediately.

I caught this iridescent, unidentified chappy filling up his rodeo ”chaps” with pollen on one of my four-nerve daisy plants. Look at his back legs (click then click again on the left image) he looks like Mr Tumnus from “The Chronicles of Narnia”.

I planted a whole bunch of California poppies in between a mass planting of artemisia ‘powis castle’ recently. I thought the orange would look good contrasted against the silver. I was suprised when this pale yellow bloom, the first one, popped up. I am not complaining, I just wonder if this one is a one-off or that they will all be the same color.

My ice plants are going ballistic, break a piece off, plant it, and within a week the tiny transplant will have formed it’s own bloom! amazing. Here is a face-like new bloom (with a green chin and a ridiculous hat) preparing to pop open. The plants on the left were tiny when I planted them. They have filled in really fast.

Staying with succulents for a moment, my “Botox Lady’s” hair is just starting
to “root” ahem. I think by the end of this year she may have a full head of “succulent”
hair.  Perhaps then she will stop complaining every time I walk past her.

Stargazer lily in my Hell-Strip.

I have my first mexican sage bloom this week (center)

China berry blooms, they smell really good but the blooms and the berries
will send you, or your pets, straight to the hospital, if ingested.

Gerbera daisy after the rains.

My middle bed is filling in pretty fast with the excellent growing weather we have been having.

Why Dr Strange(g)love?

I bought these yesterday! “They just don’t make them like they used to in my day ESP”…
…damned Waltons.

Stay Tuned For:
“Revenge of the Turds”
All material © 2009 for east_side_patch. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The weather in the patch of late has been almost perfect (in Texas terms). Warm, sunny, blue-sky days with just the slightest hint of coolness in the breeze, and pleasant, mosquito free (well almost) nights. The evenings are really scented right now from the jasmine vine at the side of my property.
Ahh, if only the temperatures would remain as moderate as they are right now.

Here is my star jasmine, actually I was wrong, here is my Pink jasmine, or Winter Jasmine
Jasminum polyanthum.
(Thank you for the correction Jenny).

…can you spot the sphinx moth, it is not easy.
The leaves of the plants in the jasmine family are used to brew tonic teas and herbal remedies in China. Research indicates that the plant does indeed contain chemical enzymes that function as anti-inflammatories. The flowers of the plant are also used to create jasmine essential oil, they are gathered at night because the odour of jasmine is more powerful after dark. The oil is so expensive because it takes…

“One million flowers”
to produce a small amount of oil.

Moving on to this little brick oven-baked
strip of bermuda grass infested heaven.

Before and after.
Almost done. Sage pruned up, granite layed down, at the property I have been working on.
The “Hell Strip” now requires some feather grass to soften the edges and fill in the planting and perhaps a shasta, or four nerve daisy or five, to add some low maintenance color?

Back at the patch there was also a line of tiny feather grasses about to go into their own low nutrient, decomposed granite home. The mature grasses around the perimeter of the circular bed were planted around this time last year. I am about to dig these up and divide them, I will cut the divisions back to almost the same height as the new ones.

Moving on to some other parts of the patch:


The itchy “Eye of Sauron” cast it’s critical gaze onto
this area of the ESP this past week:

This patch of land has been irritating me for quite long enough. It was the first area in the entire yard I started planting and doing some “improvements” in, over time it has ended up a bit of a hodge podge of living and man-made things. There were bits of fences with lattice nailed to them, old cedar carcasses, and containers randomly strewn around the area buried in lots and lots of ivy. There was even a grumpy old iris crammed up like a criminal, face pushing against a fence (that served no purpose), screaming profanities!

This all needed to go, a clean slate, a fresh start etc.

The fence and lattice monstrosity
was the first thing to come out,
lucky for me I had not cemented
the posts into the ground, they were out
in seconds. I felt better already.

I noticed I had a couple of what I thought were small elephant-ears planted in here that needed to be transplanted.  I dug down a little and was amazed to find this massive screaming Taro root (corm).
The plant above the large bulb has rarely got above a few feet in height. Very odd indeed!

I also pulled up a few logs out of the area. This one looked like it had some japanese letters carved into it.
There has been some serious boring going on in here, (no funny comments).

Here is a cedar carcass that was completely covered in ivy.
This one I immediately found a new home for.
I will use this as a planter for some small succulent plants.

I was making good progress, then, through a pile of dead leaves,
I saw an edge of black plastic and remembered exactly
what was buried in here.

No, it was not Spock’s coffin.

It was a large, black, home depot “pond” that I had submerged many years ago as an ill-fated attempt at a bog garden. Over time the whole area went into neglect, the flagstones got covered up with leaves, and eventually everything went out of sight and subsequently out of mind.
Today was to be extraction day.
I had dug it in, now I will dig it out, this time it is destined for the spring bulk pick up (unless that is, anyone wants it)? I will throw in a couple of braces of agaves, what? :-)

Here is the beached whale finally hoisted up onto the pine-bark beach.
There were many critters living under the “pond” that I don’t care to mention (shudders), but one I will …

m m must get out!
Geckos, lots of them, they had a real hard time getting out of the steep incline with loose soil.
I gave them all a “legs-up” with the tip of my shovel, in defense, one unfortunately dropped it’s tail, a process called autotomy. A mechanism I am happy we do not share. Can you imagine?
Geckos are small to average sized lizards belonging to the family Gekkonidae which are found in warm climates throughout the world. Geckos are unique among lizards in their vocalizations, making chirping sounds in social interactions with other geckos. The name gecko actually stems from the Indonesian work gekok, imitative of its cry.

Last year a gecko, partly preserved in amber for 100 million years, was the oldest fossilized gecko ever found. The amber, began its existence as tree sap, in which the lizard was apparently caught. The find was at least 40 million years older than the oldest known gecko fossil,shedding additional light on the evolution and history of these ancient lizards that tickled the feet of giant dinosaurs. Ironically the only part of this gecko that was preserved was it’s foot.

looking like more screaming mandrake roots, these divisions came from the two plants that were still living in the pond.  I must have got twenty plants out of these original two! I am not sure what they are and for now they are dispersed in my Hoja Santa bed.

Here is the area all cleaned up. The clean up also created yet another new pile of leaves that will be added to the compost bins as needed. More on this area in future posts.

Bloomers this week:

“Aw, stop messing about”!

These are the rather elaborate blooms on my Purple-leaf Sand Cherry right now
Prunus x cistena


Small, pinkish, fragrant flowers are followed by blackish purple summer fruits on this slow-growing, multibranched shrub. Foliage is reddish purple. Sand Cherry can reach 6 to 10 feet tall and 3 to 5 feet wide (if you are lucky). If the growth rate on mine is any measure, this will take a very, very long time. Based on my previous post “Bamboo Aliens.”
The image of the “hatchling” has caused
a continuous stream of inquisitive intergalactic travelers
teleporting to the patch this last week.
This cosmonauts “old school”  technology really surprised me.

Making a fragrance cocktail with the pink jasmine this year is my small but potent Satsuma tree. The blooms on this tree make your mouth water and it is crammed with honey bees!  The blooms on this little tree promise more than the singular (albeit very tasty)  fruit it managed to squeeze out last year.  http://east-side-patch.livejournal.com/14147.html
Fingers crossed for more this year.
Imagine a full-sun “Hell-Strip” planted up with three of these? mmmm, now that would be different.

Verbena in full-on sprawl mode and bloom. I like the way the form mimicks the Texas holey rocks.  The plant fills in every nook and cranny between rocks.

It always amazes me when these little succulent rosettes send up these relatively
enormous flower spikes,  this one looking particularly shrimp-like.

Here is another flower spike in the same bed. This one has an interesting
white flower color and shape.

As I was walking away from my round succulent bed I caught a slight
movement in the corner of my eye. I followed this grasshopper for a while
before I managed to obtain these shots. This guy was extremely hard to spot,
having virtually no contrast in it’s body and head coloration. I think this is
brown-spotted range grasshopper (Psoloessa delicatula).

and finally…


An unfurling Gerbera Daisy looks like it would be a great home for “Nemo,” a movie I have watched 18.25 times, (not by choice).

Oh, Just one more daisy…

Stay Tuned For:
“Dr Strange-glove”
All material © 2009 for east_side_patch. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

“Look Maggy the mainframe has intercepted a sub-space blog posting that indicates that one of our hatch-ling cocoons has been discovered on the, wait one minute, fourth, no the third planet from the sun in the Milky-way system. Set an intercept course immediately”.
“Course laid in Hamish.”

This was the disturbing gooey, alien scene inhabiting
one of my weeping bamboos, and it covered
quite a large area! I have never seen anything
like this before, any ideas anyone?
My best guess is bamboo mealy bug.
I investigated a little deeper into the sticky interior…

And I pulled out what I first thought was a marinated
grilled quail (I always garden in white forensic gloves),
then quickly realized that I needed to make some
serious phone calls.

“Scully this came out of ESP’s
weeping bamboo!”
“I know Mulder, but there is something
even more disturbing you need to see on
ESP’s  front sidewalk, it may be related”…

“I believe everything. And l believe nothing. I suspect everyone. And l suspect no one. I gather the facts, examine the clues… and before you know it, the case is solved!”


Someone had committed a crime on my sidewalk and believe me it wasn’t for the faint hearted.  I applied pressure to the area with one of my digits, but sadly the fruit died in my fingertips.

The interior of the wound looked just a little too life-like for comfort.
My prickly pear dropping a whole bunch of ripe fruit right now.

The Coat of Arms was designed by         A painting of what Tenochtitlan would have looked like
Francisco Eppens Helguera,
a famous Mexican Architect .

The Aztec people were guided by god Huitzilopochtli to seek a place where an eagle landed on a prickly-pear cactus, eating a snake… After hundreds of years of searching they saw a sign on a small swampy island in Lake Texcoco. Their new home they named Tenochtitlan (“Place of the Prickly Pear Cactus”). In A.D. 1325 they built a city on the site of the island in the lake; this is now the center of Mexico City…Amazing!
The plant depicted on the coat of arms is a nopal cactus.

Prickly Pear Cactus have been
a staple food of Native Americans
for centuries. Some
species were introduced into
North America from tropical
America. It is sold in Mexican
markets as “tuna.”
Prickly pear juice can be used to
make jelly, conserve, marmalade
and even poured on salads. And if you
are feeling like a real party animal
mix the juice with 7-Up or ginger ale
and you will have a drink similar to a:

The fruit of prickly pears, also goes by the name of cactus figs or Indian fig,
it has to be peeled carefully to remove the small spines on the outer skin
before consumption.

Oh, one more thing, if your hair is lacking a certain lustre,
the gel-like sap of this plant can be used as a hair conditioner!
You can have a refreshing beverage and condition
your hair at the same time!

The mother plant is so huge now. I keep whacking off the low branches to encourage a higher growth habit. These wooden stems are really deceptive, inside their woody looking exterior lies a relatively soft succulent. The hand saw just glides through these boughs, (it makes a nice change to cut through something, actually anything, with less effort than you thought it would actually take!) an extremely rare phenomenon.

Everything but the kitchen sink! My white-trash rain collection “system” looks really attractive dosn’t it?
Oh, and it is a really easy and fast “system” to set up – no plumbing expertise required!  One day I will get to this!

Yes as you can see, some rain has finally made it to Central Texas this week, and I am not about to waste a drop of it. With temperatures going up and down faster than the stock market, it is hard to tell if we are in summer or winter.
Just before the cold and wet weather arrived I was basking outside on one of my canvas seats watching one of my Harry Potters casting a spell…

“Tillandsia recurvata”! “Aye’s has a very bad feeling about all of this.”

I had my camera tucked between my legs (for what I believed was safe keeping).
After all the “spells” were executed, the light moving to dusk. we got up and went inside.
I awoke during the night to the sound of rain hitting our metal roof, ahh,
I smiled and resumed rehearsing the sea-shanty I was whistling through my nose.
I can’t quite be sure but at one point I think someone joined in for a short duet.

The following morning I was going through my usual routine;  I showered and put on my boots to go feed my fish. This is when I encountered a problem, I never leave the house without my camera, I have learned the shortest journey down my yard (without a camera), always creates the best opportunity for a truly fantastic shot. It is second nature to me now to slip it into my pocket before exiting the house. The problem was my camera was missing…

I scoured all the usual places it generally frequents, the dresser, the bowl, that little shelf that no-body ever uses, nothing. I began to have a really bad sinking feeling. After about half an hour of checking exactly the same places five times, (plus the obligatory peek inside the refrigerator), I glanced out of my window, and with a sort of sixth sense, my eyes fell right on it. I could see it shining on one of the canvas chairs, but what was that reflection above it? Something was terribly wrong.

[Re-Inactment].
It was lying there like an electronic “Ophelia”, submerged under a few inches of our well needed water. I ran outside moaning a dramatic, cinematic, slow-motioned ”Noooooooo”! and scooped it from of it’s watery grave. I have no idea what I was thinking, like I could bring it back to life, perhaps it had miraculously survived a cold night under-water?  Ridiculous!
I turned on the oven, wrapped it up and gently placed my little waterlogged piece of technology on a low heat for a few hours. It is now residing on one of our heater vents on the floor where it will stay for the next week or so, on the remote chance it will spring back to life again.


“It can happen!”
Lets go back to where all this started…
Ballmoss…Tillandsia recurvata

Nerd alert! Nerd alert! Ne…….
I want to take a break from all the drama happening on the East-side and write a little about this mis-understood bromeliad. We all have it, most of us hate it, but its here to stay so lets take an unbiased look at this woven ball of grass.

First of all, ball moss isn’t really a moss at all, but a true plant with flowers and seed. It is a member of the Bromeliad family, so it is related to the pineapple of all things. Ball moss is an epiphyte, (non-parasitic plant living on other plants), similar to many other bromeliads such as orchids, ferns, and my favorites, lichens.
The common assumption is that ball moss is a parasite, sucking and zapping the strength out of healthy trees  like a vampire . Some people also think that heavy infestations of ball moss will cause a tree to decline because leaves can’t get enough light, but ball moss does not like sun, preferring the inner part of the crown of a tree, a place where most leaves are usually dead anyway. These ideas seem to be perpetuated by tree trimmers, oh and do not get me started about leaf-blowers…and time changes!
Most botanists are of the belief that there is no evidence to support any of these fears. It must be noted however, on really heavy infestations a tree may go “into decline” due to the ball moss smothering the buds and limiting circulation to the branch-ends due to the plants circular growth habit. I emphasize here, heavy infestations.

Roots and seed pods. The seeds in these fruits are long gone. The seeds incorporate long hairs which helps them to ride the wind currents and ultimately to stick to something, even chain link fencing!

Ball moss anchors its “pseudo-roots” into the bark, but actually derives no nutrients from the tree, the roots are a securing mechanism only. The plant uses tendrils called “hold fasts” to fasten themselves to branches, and they are extremely effective. It survives by absorbing water and nutrients from the atmosphere. Ball moss “fixes” atmospheric nitrogen and eventually returns it to the soil much like alfalfa and clover plants do. More than likely ball moss does no harm to healthy trees, except to make the “inhabited” trees unsightly in many people’s eyes, for this reason it is generally despised, and aggressively eradicated.
I don’t know if they are still carrying them, but the Big Red Sun used to make some really creative arrangements from these “air” plants.

Poor ball moss! There will always be a “limited” place for you in my post oak.
Besides they make great wands, flamboyant toupees and inexpensive hackysacs.

Some other areas of interest in the patch this wet week…

My Gasteria looking more stomach-like, (and a little flamingo), with every passing day.

The start of a new elephant ear.  Kaboom!

This one always confuses me…is this some type of Lambs Ear?
It pops up sporadically in my yard. It looked pretty amazing today with its furry leaves hanging on to the moisture.

A succulent flower hit hard by the rains.

Lantana blooms.

Is this an anole? Is this a mechanism to protect the fly from anoles? To
make anoles think it is an anole? Or is this a load of old anoles?
What do you think?
I believe this is a fire-fly?

The tiniest of succulents in the tiniest of holey rock cavities. Meet Bill and Ben the holey rock men. It is amazing anything can grow in this tiny, elevated spot on the rock, if there is a will, nature will find a way.

A macro marigold resembles a red-hot barbecue.

Another tiny jumping spider, (talking of aliens).

And finally…another wet dusk in the ESP, only this time I have
my camera safe, right in front of me.
Now, where was I, ah yes, my sea shanty!

Stay Tuned For:
“Pushing up the Daisies”
All material © 2009 for east_side_patch. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Bland colors and a lawn butting right up to the house, screamed
out for a smoother transition, well at least a transition.
Some scrappy sages haphazardly positioned around the side-walk.
Is this a new “abstract” planting style I have not heard off?
Out they come.

Here is a property I have been working on in South Austin. The property was about to go
on the market and needed a quick front yard “face-lift”, to give it some extra ”curb appeal”.
The budget was limited and the turn around needed to be really fast, basically what can
be done with the minimal of changes, to offer the greatest visual bang for the buck?
My first port of call was a rapid visualization that helped convey the new design intent to
the owner, this was to include a new color scheme for the house, as well as the design
for a front of house, low maintenance bed that I thought would help transition the house
into the rest of the front yard.

For a color scheme, the rust and dark-grey colors on the large cedar tree,
and the white and tan colors of the stone on the house, seemed a natural fit.

A quick sketch to capture the basic plan.

Then some more refined renderings that visualize the new rust and dark-grey color scheme.

Ahh, this brings back a lot of familiar memories. “These are a few of my favorite things”.
A large mound of decomposed granite and a palette of rocks.
My wheelbarrow on viewing this scene defiantly
deflated it’s only tire.

And the final result. The white boulders reference the stone on the house and afford
a more relaxed look. The decomposed granite picks up tan of the brickwork and the roof.
By encompassing the Cedar tree into the bed, the tree now looks anchored and part
of the house, rather than floating in space.

“What IS he talking about”?

Two containers in the same color palette, planted up with non-spiky sotols for height
and movement.

I knew those agave pups would come in useful for something!
I spaced four of them around the base of the cedar tree.
Perhaps whoever buys the house will see these babies
mature into the towering yellow beanstalk I witnessed last year.

Moving on to the…

“Hell-Strip”:


Sage and bermuda infestation, my favorite!

This little strip of hell on the same property has really lived up
to it’s reputation. I have spent two days hacking and scraping
at this beast to bring down the grade far enough to allow a
generous portion of decomposed granite to be administered.
Whomever planted these sage bushes just mounded up
some turf on top of the strip and planted! aarghh! The right
picture shows the shrubs pruned back and the soil level brought
down, ready to receive some weed suppressive material and granite.
While I was nibbling and clawing in here I did have a couple of really
interesting close-encounters I want to share with you:

(Insert some Darth Vader breathing) what? How would you write it?
schmeerrrrr…Kufff perhaps?

“Dig lightly we must, the force is strong with this beetle’s mandibles”.

Don’t mess with this Dark Lord, he has a serious attitude problem and some
serious looking pincers. I use one of these beetles as a nut cracker around Christmas time.
This is a Blue-margined Ground Beetle – Pasimachus depressus
and it was big. You can just about see the purple/blue color around the leading edge of the beetle.
It is often mistaken as a stag beetle because of it’s prominent mandibles.

The ground beetle is astonishingly fast, a fact I was painfully aware of with
my lens a couple of centimeters from his prominent jaw-line. The ground
beetle stands high off the ground on sprinters legs, which come in really
useful, as this beetle is a hunting beetle that runs down it’s prey. If the
large mandibles have latched on to one of your digits, most likely this guy
will have also sprayed you with some secretions from his rear-end that
bare no resemblance to the latest fragrance from Calvin Klein…nice!

“Yoda? What is that smell?” ” It is the ground-beetle Luke.”
“The force is strong young Luke.”
“I sense a disturbance in the force.”
“Aw man, Yoda you are strapped to my back!”


My other encounter in the Hell Strip
caused me to involuntarily do a
backward dance reminiscent of
a Scottish jig on the sidewalk as
a recoil mechanism. It would
have looked great in slow motion,
complete with facial grimaces
and a low audible moaning sound.
I had unearthed a Tarantula!


“One step closer ESP and I WILL throw this lump of gravel at you!” Ctenizidae

Here she is in full-on defensive mode in my wheelbarrow. After I had recovered
from my dance I clambered for the camera and was relieved to find she had
survived the shoveling journey unscathed…all limbs present and obviouslyfunctional.

Okay it was a female trap-door spider.

It is called a trap-door spider because when it enters it’s burrow, it pulls the hatch shut behind it.

Trap-Door Spider, is the common name for any of the several large, hairy,
harmless tropical spiders that nest underground. They make long burrows
in the earth, line them with silk, which they spin, and fashion at the entrance
a bevel-edged, hinged, accurately fitting trapdoor often made of alternate
layers of earth and silk. The upper surface of the door may be covered with
earth or gravel, thus disguising the entrance. The nests of trap-door spiders
are generally in groups. The young hatch in the burrows of their mothers and
live there for a few weeks; they then leave the nest and begin small
underground burrows of their own. Trap-door spiders subsist largely
on ants and other insects.

Females never travel far from their burrows, especially if they have an egg-sac.
During this time, the female will capture food and regurgitate it to feed her spiderlings.
Enemies of the trapdoor spider include certain spider wasps, which seek
out the burrows. They sting the owner and wait for it folks…lay their
eggs (usually one per spider) on its body. No,no,no,no,no!
When the egg hatches, the larva devours the spider alive. Brrrrrrr.
Trap-door spiders are often kept in terrariums as pets, their bites
are painful but not highly toxic.
There are over 60 species of trapdoor spiders.

Thank you Jerry over there at http://www.bugsinthenews.com/ for the extremely
quick ID and interesting information about this spider.

Back in the Patch…

Hardy Yellow Ice Plant Delosperma nubigenum
has started to bloom. This one apparently is not as heat tolerant as some of the
other varieties as it comes from colder higher mountains in S.Africa. Has anyone
had any experience with this one? I am wondering if it makes it through a
Texas summer, or simply turns to dust?

Remember my Gasteria, look at how far it has come on in only a week!
I am interested just how “stomach – like” the blooms actually turn out to be.
They are now separating from the cluster and falling down.

This line of sedum in my middle bed that I transplanted and separated out
of one container is spreading out nicely. I must have got twenty new plants
from this division, some of which I transplanted in between some of my
moss boulders. I plan to continue this process until I have it growing between
all my boulders. My next post will be in ten years time when this task will be finished.

Young salvias are blooming right now.

Ballistic bulbines in my front bed.

Stay Tuned For:
“Bamboo Aliens”
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