This Coreid Bug or Leaffooted bug…

Acanthocephala declivis

in fact the acanthocephala genus contains the largest insects in this family, with the declivis being the largest member…I had found a monster!  Such a intimidating character with his flared and spiny collar.  Although members of another family, the Pentatomidae, are commonly called stink bugs, this chap smells much worse, probably in part because they are bigger insects. If disturbed, these large insects will squirt a disgusting liquid out of the glands on the sides of their bodies. Brrrr.

The body is a dusty gray color and is hard to misidentify. It is frequently found under leaves during the winter months and on warm winter days you may find them sunning themselves on small blankets.

The trunk-like appendage tucked up under it’s body is called a stylet or rostrum,

I said rostrum!

when it is ready to start sucking on a plant, this is it’s modified-mouth-part weapon of choice.  Within this tube move the stylets – sharp needle-like structures with which the insect pierces the plant tissue.  The method of feeding by plant bugs as a whole is to inject saliva into the plant tissue which assists in its breakdown thereby making this tissue easier to assimilate.

“I like this declivis of Earth”

My eldest screamed “Big BUG” shortly after I had dug up a baby feather grass,  I must have disturbed him. I went back with my camera to catch him delicately wading like an H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds tripod through my succulent bed.  I was really happy to get these shots without encountering any serious “emissions”.

While I was clambering around in this bed I did happen to notice this little bit of zen…

What a great place for a grass-seed to germinate, very sculptural. It looks as though the Naboo have tied it together, perhaps as a rudimentary shelter? I am pretty sure that these blocked up caves are where the Naboo tribe take shelter in the cold winter months. I find them all over the Patch, some even have the remains of tiny fires at the cave entrance.

The frost distressed skin on this agave made it look completely bizarre, very rhino.

“Is that really what my skin looks like?’

“Meee, I am afraid soooo, Mr rhinooooowwww“.

Yes, to the delight of the hobbits their friend, Drake the cat, dropped into the Patch once again to drink deeply form my algae laden feeder tank, I think it is addicted to it, my old cat used to like the the flavor too.

New blood-red growth has started on this flamboyant bauhinia corymbosa vine.  This vine is one of my favorites in the patch and once established it will breeze through both frost and drought.

The name ” Bauhinia “ was a name given this genus by Linnaeus to honor the twin brothers Johann and Gaspard Bauhin, who were 16th century Swiss scientists – Johann was a botanist and Gaspard a botanist and physician.

A storybook vine if ever there was one.

Using the name of these identical twins is fitting as Bauhina leaves are composed of two identical lobes.  Here is a picture of the vine taken last summer, it looks like thousands of green butterflies.

This sotol was showing off with a setting winter sun illuminating it, this is why we have sotols, this is what makes their flesh ripping antics worth while.  That is a swath of ghost plants next to it, with some of that irritating clover that is really hard to get to… and out.

Here are the ghosts in all of their animated glory, and yes that is the Leaffooted bug, out of focus in the foreground. It was so large it was hard not to get it in frame, no-matter where I was shooting.

Other “almost” spring-like developments this week…

Tiger Aloe,

Aloe variegata

Looking like some old fashioned British sea-side rock (candy), I had a couple of these but only this one made it, not because of the freezes, oh no, but because the other one got sat on, you can fill in the rest. Pink-red flowers in winter, you can’t beat that.

I wanted to pull out this milk thistle so bad, but I did a double take on it, got drawn into the foliage coloration and thought I would leave it for a while longer. There is a legend that the leaves were formed by milk that fell from the breast of the Virgin Mary when she was suckling the baby Jesus.  Apparently the leaves can be boiled like spinach. Has anyone tried this?
It flowers between June and August – under the purple flower, there are several stiff flower bracts, looking like a many-pointed star. Maybe I will leave it alone after all, curious I am (Yoda voice).

The first coneflower is on the rise. Horah!

And a round of applause to the copper canyon daisy on it’s return topside.

I have to show this next image as a follow-up to the creation of dirty “frosty” in my last post.  Of course he melted, but she had a re-incarnation already planned for the dirty, slush man… a reincarnation in a bowl, it is just what he would have wanted…

I cannot believe that I have made it through this entire post without mentioning my…

And to finish, the tiny cooling flowers of an Ipheion, ‘Rolf Fiedler’ (Thanks for the ID Les).  The best blue color!

Inspirational concept of the week…

geotube is a building proposal designed by the california based architecture firm, faulders studio for the
unique environment of dubai. the building features a large super structure which will, over time, grow
a skin façade on its own. the system utilizes a vertical salt deposit growth systemthat uses water from the
adjacent persian gulf. the water is sprayed onto the mesh of the superstructure using a gravity fed system,
allowing the skin to continually grow using nothing but local materials. because the persian gulf has the
world’s highest salinity for oceanic water, the sprayed water will evaporate and salt deposits begin to
form. ‘the tower’s appearance transforms from a transparent skin to a highly visible white solid plane.
the result is a specialized habitat for wildlife that thrives is this environment, and an accessible surface
for the harvesting of crystal salt.’ the water would be pumped in using a long underground tube, hence
the project’s name.

Stay Tuned for:

“Feather Hugger”

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

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Captain’s Log… Supplemental:

“We have encountered a rare phenomena in what appears to be a parallel universe to that of our home planet…Earth.  The away team, led by Dr McCoy, have reported that there is a strange, new life-form on the planet surface that appears crystalline in nature”…

“My God Bones, what IS that thing?  Set phasers to stun…Spock, analysis?’

“Captain, it appears to be some kind of miniature dirty snowman…scanning… scanning, the anomaly appears to consist of nasty slushy and blackened snow, origin: Austin Texas, an area that witnessed a small flurry of snow today, I suggest caution Jim.”

Snow falling on Cedar.

By the time the Hobbits got home from school, most of the snow had unfortunately melted, but there were a few select areas still harboring the white matter…

The hearts of the sago palms turned out to be a good snow collection points. Photon torpedoes.

Fast and nimble small hands formed the dirty snow, she did not care, oh no, she was on a snowman mission, and oh yes, she was hell-bent on creating one.  She reached into her pocket and like a seasoned magician produced a baby carrot. (I have no idea where that even came from, or when she got it from, but a carrot she had).

I was really trying not to laugh when she forced the nose into the dirty slush-ball, she was serious, she was sculpting like Henry Moore, very Wallace and Gromit, complete with icicles hanging from his nose!

Then came the eyes and the “feet”, I had to turn away, it was reminding me of a crazed “Hedwig” from Harry Potter.

She thought he was best thing ever…”Frosty” (predictable I know), was then carefully picked up and gently placed into the relative safety of a wooden salad bowl (she anticipated that her brother wanted to stomp on poor Frosty’s head). Her actions were logical!

If he is “not there” in the morning, I anticipate some pre-school remorse.

Stay Tuned for:

“I Tripped Over a Leaffooter”

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

You do not want to be with me on any type of public transportation…trust me, I am a traveling companion’s liability.

“Six coaches of the 1400 Glasgow to London express passenger train carrying about 300 passengers became derailed as the train approached Harrow and Wealdstone station. The train came to rest with the locomotive and leading four coaches standing on the rails in the station platform. The fifth coach was derailed and leaning over. The rear of the train (which I was in) had divided into two parts with a gap of 400m between the leading part and three derailed but upright coaches ; and a gap of 35m between those three and the last two derailed but upright coaches. Twenty-six persons were injured, none seriously. Twenty were treated locally, and six taken to hospital. The emergency services were called by the senior conductor, using a passenger’s cellphone, as the train came to rest. (conflicting reporting, I know).

I came across this newspaper cutting that my parents had sent me other day, it took me right back to that fateful dusk. Of course I just had to be on this train!  I thought I would share this story as a welcome break from my usual Hell-Strip rhetoric.

It is a really weird feeling to realize that something is going very wrong when you know you are going very, very fast, and this train, taking me back to my flat in London, had it’s pedal to the metal.  The first thing I noticed that I thought was very odd, was the sound of hail, large hail, hitting the roof of the train, odd because it had been a rare, uncustomary hot day.  As it turns out this hail was actually gravel from the more forward sections of the train that had already jumped off the track.  These carriages were ploughing through the gravel sending it shooting up into the air where it was landing on the rear of the train.  Before I really had time to think about this, all hell broke loose as my part of the train got dragged screaming and whining from the tracks.  On “disembarking” the tracks the carriage immediately filled up with gravel dust and it was loud…extremely loud. I held onto the seat top in front of me then I broke all of the crash-survival rules and stood up out of my seat for a little bit of insanely bumpy urban surfing, I think I was fighting a natural primordial instinct to run to safety, hard to do on an Intercity125 train, even if trying to escape the nasty on-board sandwiches.

The closest thing to convey this experience is when you know you are having a bad dream and you are falling, you know something really bad is going to happen to you, so you change it. You usually wake up, or change the script in that final white flash of the “impact” moment right?  Well it felt exactly like this, only your brain has made the delineation that this is not a dream, oh no it tells you, this is actually really happening and the white flash will most likely be your…well yes, that.  Lets just say adrenalin courses through one’s veins at an alarming rate when things get this far out of control.  When the train finally came to a grinding halt, (it took a while), a teenager sitting across from me at a table with her family, broke into some shock related language that targeted the driver of the train, oh and what a shocking monologue it was!

I always remember this, as I couldn’t tell if the parent’s horrified expressions were the result of the crash they had just survived, or their look of horror was the result of what was now emanating from their young daughter’s mouth?  They turned, ashen faced, and looked at her as if she was the…

“The **** of a ******, what the ******* WAS THIS *****….******* DOING?… ****!… ******!

Me? I only had one thought: “Must get out before another train comes along.” My carriage was pitched over which meant we could only exit from the high side, which required a hang and drop. We all made it out and started to head across the tracks and up onto an adjacent embankment. I could see sections of the train derailed further down the track. Our section had ploughed through a bunch of railroad ties that were now snapped in half and wedged up tight under the undercarriage, elevating the entire structure. I could also see a bloke in the distance frantically waving his arms and running toward our group screaming.  The tracks that we were about to cross to carry us to “safety” were in fact charged with enough force to sling-shot us around the moon.

Image nicked from The Reasoner

These tracks were the start of the London Underground rail network…and we were literally feet and seconds away from crossing them and getting instantly vaporized. Oh no, you do not want to get on any form of public transportation with me…

Here are a few other travel nuggets I think you should know about…

I was on a North Sea ferry that hit a force 10 full gale on its way from Hull to Belgium. Everyone was confined to sleeping quarters. You could feel this massive ship riding over waves the size of mountains. When the ferry would get to the very top you could feel the whole boat shudder as the propellers came out of the water, riding down these waves actually caught your stomach. I asked a worker the next morning if that was normal? “Oh no”, she said, “We would have turned around but the waves got too large too quick, worst sea I have ever been in, in twenty years of doing this crossing”. I avoided the piles of sawdust until I disembarked.

It continues…

Apart from the Chevy Tahoe hitting my house a few months back http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/09/dude-wheres-my-car/ I do have a few more travel-tales believe it or not.

I was on a Virgin Atlantic flight that was almost empty (which added to the surreal atmosphere).  About an hour and a half into the flight we hit turbulence, no big deal, oh but it was, it was turbulence that got worse and worse until the 747 felt like it was literally getting punched in the side of it’s fuselage.  I have traveled a lot and never had turbulence like this.  The captain commented numerous times with the last one being…“Well folks we have taken the plane as high as we can possibly go, and as low to get us out of this cell, but it looks like there is no avoiding it, please stay seated with your seat-belts fastened”. There was a young couple behind me, in the quiet darkness I heard the girl whisper: “The plane surely cannot take much more of this beating”, I looked out of the window, and immediately regretted it when I saw the wing of the plane flapping like a migratory goose…I slammed shut the window screen and continued to panic for the next five hours, it was exhausting.

I swore I would never fly again after that…whatever.

Oh yeah, you don’t want to get on any public transportation with me…

There was this other incident that involved… oh never mind…

Enough of this nonsense, back to more of my Hell-Strip rhetoric…You didn’t really think you could escape it did you?

I got a letter today from the leader of the Naboo tribe thanking me for expanding his tribe’s territories in the East of the Patch. The area is now cleared and prepped (for the most part), ready to receive copious amounts of decomposed granite, and some rocks…

…and the first of many gnarly holes have been excavated and tested for drainage, which I have to say did not go very well, not very well at all.  This hole took a good twenty minutes to drain, not good, and yes, RR, these holes needed some tooth shattering, pick-axe action to get them down to the deeper depths. Got to love hell-strips for supplying soil and drainage more reminiscent of an off-world, dead planetary “crust,” then soil you would actually plant anything in!

“The substrate is totally devoid of all life-forms captain, ESP’s hypothesis is correct.”

There were a few treasures to be found though, treasures like this old milk bottle, I think that is what it is…Spock, analysis?

The new home for a future planter. I think another burgundy canna lily will be going in here, along with some pea-gravel as a back-fill.  Sorry to make you tilt your head.

Here are some boulders starting to go in at the base of the mound to hold it all in place.  (Hobbit picture)

A few transplanted rosemary plants and an old cedar carcass will help fill-in and naturalize the area.

I used some of my compost tea that has been stewing for the last six months to water these plants in…this immediately caught someones attention, especially when it started to foam up and stink.  He would stick his face right inside this vessel and keep smelling it, I had no idea really why?

The next thing I will do is to plant yet more babies from my Mexican feather grass in front of the boulders like I have in my back garden to soften the scene up. I have transplanted about twenty-five babies so far this year and they are all growing well at about an inch tall. Excuse the stroller, it seems like this product is a camera hog, I take pictures and think “mmm, I think that will make a nice shot”…and sure enough, there she is, lurking upper frame in all her pink raggedy glory!

“I like the way it looks ESP”.

“Sorry Molly, I thought you might”. While I was out messing with these mounds of dirt and clay I did happen to notice that we now have moss, and a lot of it on my moss-boulders, and oooh how fresh and green it is. It amazes me how these boulders green-up with only a little moisture. It is also amazing that these mosses survive our harsh Texas summers…one tough, resilient, bounce-back tiny little plant.

Good enough to eat, balsamic vinegar and chop-sticks please.

Poppies are looking bumper this year…and

Finally…

With all of the construction going on with our house, a few bugs have been coming out of the woodwork so to speak.  This one climbed up my USB laptop keyboard light and succeeded in completely giving me a full-on conniption, complete with silly walk around the room…in my peripheral vision I thought it was a roach, I hate roaches. I instinctively slapped it to the ground with the back of my cordless mouse, where I found it lying on it’s back in this pose, cracking up laughing.

Inspirational “mossy” image of the week:

Stay Tuned for:

“The Shire”

All material © 2009 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized

intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and

punishable by  late  (and extremely unpleasant)

14th century planet Earth techniques.

I woke up this weekend morning like I always do…

Oh I don’t think so!…

Yes, that’s a little more like it!

I rolled over for a few more minutes of hobbitless blissful slumber, then something slowly started to creep quietly into my subconsciousness, something that immediately started to niggle at my quiet dream-state psyche, but what was it?  The niggle turned into some obligatory mouth forming of some “sleep-words” that apparently became grumblings that quickly mutated into a full-fledged nightmarish scream… “uuuuhhhh?…Noooooooo!”

“HELL-STRIP ESP? …You’re Not Done Soldier!”

Ahhhh!

One sleep-deprived bloodshot eye reluctantly snapped open, followed by a deep sense of digging foreboding,  for I now knew exactly what was in-store for me again today…yes, more digging in the now only semi-softened Hell-Strip in the Patch.

Oh who am I kidding?  I jumped out of bed with a smile on my face whistling for some reason the theme tune from “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, (perhaps in memory of some hard summer pick-axing I had performed in the same area last year before giving up)?

After a typically British breakfast of clogged arteries champions, and yet another mild (not had one of these since my Scotland trip) cardiac twinges, I felt fighting fit and ready for some Hell-Strip action.

“Yeah, Baby, Yeah!”

Here it is in all it’s compacted, weedy and irritatingly mounded glory.

I had a distinct sense of Déjà vu as I started nibbling away in the first corner. This side of the hell strip was a lot different in character then the one I gnawed out last weekend, this side was stodgy, heavy, black and clay-like. The clay would keep sticking to my shovel, which is heavy at the best of times, being of an all steel construction (anything else I snap in seconds, sometimes before I even leave the store), and my boots?..By the time I had finished this little triangle I was an inch taller! I slowly realized this was not going to be an afternoon job like the previous side of the hell strip.

“What a piece of work is a hell-strip, how un-noble in the weedy season,
how lacking in aesthetic faculties, in form and moving,
how dull and unadmirable in compaction, how like an … etc.etc.

My day laborers naturally joined me on the construction site armed with a bowl of milk to attract a neighborhood cat…that took about five minutes.  I welcomed the distraction.  And the digging and hacking continued.

The opuntia tree received a bit of an early pruning to allow me better access around it to my wheelbarrow. This is one of the few sago palms that escaped relatively “un-browned” through our freezing temperatures this year.  I think the opuntia acted like an umbrella protecting it.

If you are wondering what the mad color scheme is on our front door?  Well…

the pink fairy paid us a visit this week and granted us one wish…we decided that our old house needed a new lick of paint.

“Did he say the Blue Fairy Joe”?

“I don’t think so David.”

I think she wanted a wish that was a little more errr “magical?’

And the mounds continued to grow and grow.  There is another very peculiar law of physics that exist when digging out the earth in a hell-strip. As soon as it is lifted out of the strip, it apparently instantly doubles in mass.  In no time at all, I found I was quickly running out of areas to put it, the solution?  Some creative moundage around my front garden…perfect!  What started out as a “clean out the hell-strip” project had quickily morphed into full-on reconstructive surgery on my entire front of house…needless to say, my grinning at this point was beginning to take on “Here’s Johnny” (The Shining) proportions. Everyone ran into the house.

And the digging and hacking intensified.

I excavated this…

And dug out this…

This retainer wall has always disturbed me, with it’s straight lines mirroring the sidewalk, oh no, this had no place in my fluid master plan.

“Ach, ESP!  That wall was the only thing keeping the English oot! I canna believe ye wud knock doon the”…

Oh shut your pie-hole William.

The base of this mound is going to have an arc of moss boulders to replace the demolished straight wall, and the mounds will be covered in a good layer of decomposed granite before planting. The curves, even at this stage, create much more visual movement to the once static scene…if it will only stop looking less like a construction site!

Now, where did I leave the Aleve from last weekend?

In the Patch this week…

New growth in the pond, spring is knocking.

Blossom on a Meyer Lemon making the back-deck smell like spring.

Loquats forging ahead…

…and these strange holes have formed on my pine-cone cactus…are those eyes in there?  Brrrr… (back violently spasms followed my a series of small, almost comical, right knee movements).

Nessy emerging from the murky depths of my feeder pond for it’s annual scrubbing.

Inspirational “Concept” of the week:

In the designers words…

“Books are always considered as static objects in people’s mind, transferring through words, pictures and imagination they produce. To break this traditional impression, I embed some industrial design elements in this prose florilegium which name is “book on life”. People can plant whatever they like in the left side of the book, they should care for it and watch it grow. During this process readers do not only learn the meaning of life but they create life themselves. 8 small LED lights are fixed on the bottom of the plants, in the evening the book can be turned on to become a lamp with the unique light reflect from the leaves”.

Designer: Eric Zhang

Stay Tuned for:

“Planes, Trains and North Sea Ferries”

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

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