I caught this fiendish grin coughing up seeds all over one of my pathways this morning. I quickly got a tray and stuck it underneath the vomiting seedpod, carefully picking up the seeds that had already been deposited on the decomposed granite.

Huey…Ralph!

These rather large datura seedpods start off quite hard and green, then they ripen, soften and eventually split, spewing out an enormous amount of seeds in a very drunk “ten pints of lager and a vindaloo” fashion. Oh yes, in a ripened state they are slimy and quite disgusting…but what great hats.

I picked two or three of these pods smeared them around on my tray and left them to bake in the hot Texas sun. I have never tried to grow datura from seed, but after witnessing one of the finest displays from this plant this year, and the Sphingids it attracted: http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/08/wilson/, I am determined to have a lot more of it.

I know they are poisonous, I know they contain tropane alkaloids, I know I have kids, I know I have them planted next to a mountain laurel that also drops its potentially lethal red beans all around them…What can I say?  The Patch is a dangerous place, if the plants don’t get you, the Naboo surely will.

I have hammered into my children from a very young age what they should avoid doing with certain plants in the garden, and they totally get it, this is one they give a very wide birth, well this, and the mountain laurel, and the oleander, angels trumpet and…

From a crazy grin to some rather irritated eyes…

It appears that Cactus man (junior) has developed another slight retinal irritation, just to add to all the drama that he has already had to endure in his resurrected life… http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/10/halloween-2009/

Is it me or is his “small eye” getting smaller? Also, I couldn’t help but notice that he has developed a lot more disturbing lumps on his paddle…(never a good thing).

“You have that right ESP”.

I took my hose and irrigated his eye sockets in an attempt to make him feel a little more comfortable.

On a lighter note:

Coral Vine

Antigonon leptopus

has started to bloom in the Patch this week. These pink blooms are a staple in southeast Asia for bridal bouquets, it is also known as “chain of love”, probably due to heart-shaped leaves and pink flowers that bees cannot resist.  I have a love hate relationship with this plant, it can be very invasive if left to its own devices, and it looks like Hell in the winter, so make sure you let it climb in areas where you can get to, to clear out the old growth…and whatever you do, do not let it get anywhere close to some…

…giant timber bamboo, it would like nothing more then to climb up to the top of these culms, it would scale them in seconds!

This is the skinny side of the Patch, lots of utilities and ducts, home to my redneck wind chime. It does not look too bad from this angle but lets pan out a little…

There we go!

On the left side a couple of pink jasmine vines lived happily for some years, but last winter’s freezes sadly took care of them, it is now a complete interwoven mess.  I could stand on a step ladder for hours unraveling these strands, but I won’t.  I intend to replant at the base with some more vines and let them recover the structure…the gardening equivalent of sweeping the tangled mess under the carpet.

The additional carpet of weeds on the floor are completely out of control.  While I was in here, weeding on hands and knees, I disturbed a host of unsavory characters that had made the area their home…

I found a few of these large, very grumpy toads, shortly before I felt something else, something cold and much more sinister, slimming its way around my right wrist. I instinctively flicked my arm in my now traditional conniption fashion which, for some reason, brings my right knee up toward my chin and ends with me looking behind me in a dog like fashion!  My spasm sent this unsavory creature slapping onto the side of my house…where it unexpectedly stuck.

What on earth!

“Or perhaps not from Earth ESP, have you considered that”?

I zeroed in on the anomaly with my camera set to macro…it was quite shocking!

In a panic I frantically checked my wrist, half-expecting to see a hole where this alien had burrowed, perhaps leaving a part of itself (Ahhh) inside me to grow, ultimately to consume me from the inside, luckily I found nothing.

This is a land planarian,

Bipalium kewense…

…and it was sufficiently disgusting.

They are grey to brown long flat worms with several dark stripes running down the back.  Land planarians thrive in high temperature and humidity, thus they are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical areas.  Heads of many land planarians are expanded lunate or tapering to a blunt point.  A mouth, which also serves as an anus (shudders), is present near mid-body, these disturbing worms are voracious predators of earthworms, slugs, insect larvae, and like the Naboo (reportedly) are cannibalistic.  They are also capable of utilizing their own tissues such as reproductive tissue for food when reserves are exhausted. (repeated swallowing, left knee vibration)

Here is the side alley all cleaned up, well mostly.  Now to bide my time before my next granite delivery. An alphonse karr bamboo will be going in, in front of the air conditioning unit to visually hide it from the front of the property.

Now if I can only screen the planarian from my conscious memory, perhaps I will get some sleep tonight?

Stay Tuned  for:

“Dive, Dive, Dive”

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

Congratulations on your first week at kindergarten Miss P.

I have been developing a design for a client in which I have found myself saving file names like: “Wilson_1, Wilson_2″ etc.  It just seemed to be a fitting and natural file naming system for a scheme that was to incorporate a tree house, a focal island bed, tropical planting and sandy (okay decomposed granite) weaving jungle trails. Oh yes, I have been in my howler monkeying element.

“Jane…Look, ESP is really going for a jungle look this time, me thinks boy will like this.”

“It is about time Tarzan…call cheetah and the elephants!”

To get further into the spirit of things, I decided to emulate Tarzan by constructing a rudimentary loin cloth by recycling one of my iced turbans (significantly easier to tie).  The hobbits put on their Swiss Family Robinson outfits, then, with the light fading, we all huddled up in my children’s sandbox where I attempted to get a fire going, for ambient purposes you understand, it was still 95 degrees after all!  I would also suggest that you have an established perimeter planting around your property for privacy reasons before adorning such a garment.

Just in case.

Like a true castaway, my fire was to be created from violently rubbing sticks on top of some cattail fluff on top of some post oak bark, (just to further enhance the Robinson Crusoe charade)…Ohh, but how the mosquitoes immediately began to strip our flesh!

(obligatory Lector noises)

We all took one more swig from my “Whole Foods” coconut and ran quickly inside for cover. I decided a loin cloth, although initially liberating, should not be a garment choice for a summer evening in Texas… (a stark contrast to the extremely practical and revered iced turban).  I don’t need to mention how my fire-starting escapade went.

The rear garden of this new scheme is quite large and is predominately sloped dead ground, devoid of grass…just how I like it.  Almost slap bang in the center is a stand of live oak trees that the client expressed a desire to be the future home of a magical tree house for her grandchildren (can it get any better?) Around these trees was a raised, semi-defined “island” that is currently covered in ivy and rocks…my imagination began to race…islands, rope bridges, tree-living, basically a perfect Naboo habitat came into my minds eye, a Gilligan’s Island in south Austin.

Most of the back garden is in either shade or semi shaded from the upper oak canopy. I wanted the island to be the focal point, all tropically planted under a tree house worthy of the “Black Pearl’s” crows-nest.

Savvy?

I shrouded (and visually diminished) the shed with two Bambusa multiplex alphonse karr bamboos, with another positioned on the left side of the tire swing to make it more of a destination point, privatizing the area. Jungle pathways were formed to create a better flow through the space which in turn consolidated a lot of fighting mediums and preexisting enclosures and beds.

Strong foliage plants were introduced for perimeter height and to soften up the new perimeter corrugated fence, loquats and fatsia japonica adding evergreen interest.

For the front of the house I decided to open up the doorway area by removing the existing, rather claustrophobic bed.  I also introduced an additional sweeping pathway to the side of the house for alternative access to the rear jungle scene.  The materials and tones are consistent with the new rear design, visually referencing the existing stone of the house.  A new home color scheme punches out some curb appeal, creating a more contemporary, less Tudor aesthetic. What design would be complete without some mounding artemesia, an evergreen wisteria climbing over a simple arbor for some porch fragrance, and a few metal chickens?

Installation begins in a couple of weeks!

Back to the Patch…

…and some very eerie yellow light conditions.

Talking of very eerie things.  Remember my disgusting rotten elephant ear that sprouted some side growth?  Well, I was giving it a drink this morning when I happened to notice a rather dark hole where the bulb used to be that rotted. Thinking it was just the cavity left behind where it had rotted out I filled it with water from my hose.  The strange thing was, the water never pooled up, it just kept immediately draining almost instantly?  Odd I thought.

I put the camera in the cavity and took some pictures with the flash on, these shots do not do the tunnel justice…it was deeper then I could see.  A Naboo mine shaft perhaps?

Worm sign?

Moving quickly along…

The diagonal fibers on this soft leafed yucca were so perfect that it looked manufactured.

Is that a spider in there? Brrr.

Some plants just go and keep going through our hottest months:

Pride of Barbados…Okay, I promise this will be the last time I blog about it this year.

Evergreen wisteria still as fragrant as it was in June, though it has looked better.

Illuminated by a setting sun, purple fountain grasses offer great late summer / fall color and movement.  I treat this grass as an annual and generally use it as a gap filler in the patch, it really works well with purple heart, and set against a shady backdrop it takes on a life of its own.

Finally…

Happy birthday, birthday boy!

“To infinity and Beyond.”

Did you recognize the time / space defying tee-shirt, the one that keeps showing up throughout Earth’s history?

Stay Tuned  for:

“Spitting Seeds”

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

“Look at that probosces…yeah baby, yeah”!

Sphingids are a family of moths, commonly known as hawk moths, sphinx moths and hornworms. They have been much studied for their flying ability, especially their ability to move rapidly from side to side while hovering, called ‘swing-hovering.’

It is thought that this evolved to deal with ambush predators that lie in wait in flowers.  This bird loves the luminous night blossoms of the Sacred Datura plant, also called “jimsonweed” or “devil’s weed”, the blooms of this plant last only for one summer night and as such must work fast to attract pollinators, and what pollinators it attracts!

The large Manduca sphinx moths are not only essential pollinators of the night-blooming datura plant, but the plant’s surplus foliage supports the developing larvae of these sphingids.  It’s called mutualism. The larva develops over twenty days and then molts to the pupa stage.  The larva then drops to the ground and burrows into the soil where it constructs a pupal cell immediately before pupating.

The adult moths feed on nectar, this one was in a complete frenzy, it smacked into me twice while ‘swing-hovering’, before it audibly “ka-flumped” as it belly-flopped into this bloom.  The body of this moth is about the size of a mouse (with a wingspan brrr) and I have to say it was quite disconcerting as it drunkenly careened into me at full velocity, pausing only for some freaky under-chin fluttering nonsense, every time the camera flash went off.

Needless to say, I only got these two shots in before wildly slapping myself around the neck area and running blindly (the flash had semi blinded me) for the safety of my house.  I could here “fluttering” immediately behind me as I stumbled.

I went out this evening, intending to stay out, to conduct some, temperate midnight mulching (as you do).  As the light disappeared in the Patch, I switched on the lamp strapped to my forehead and entered a quiet and relaxed state of maniacal mulching. Mulching is great, it is not loud – no fear of waking the kids or the neighbors like a bobcat has a tendency to do, and applying it offers an instant visual gratification whilst smothering the weeds. At least it does if performed in the daytime…

…the added benefit of midnight mulching is the next morning, when you wake up and get to see your work in its entirety.

Now to the haircuts…

I could stand it no longer, the dreadlocks, the matted island hair, these mounds of straw had to be taken care of immediately…it was time for crew-cuts all round for my Mexican feather grasses.

I could hear them all moaning and complaining as I walked down the pathway to my shed to retrieve my shearing implements and the bib that I will position around each one’s shoulders as I move among them.  Now is a good time to trim these grasses a little as a) if you are like me, you are probably completely fed up looking at their teenage mops and b) by cutting them back in August, it allows the plant time to recover and grow back for good winter form.

Ahhh, so much better, I can see their faces again…I must stop brushing up against that Jimsonweed!

You know it is hot when even the amaranth starts to wilt (right).

There was one lucky girl that did escape the barbers wrath…

That was because her hair was adorned with these lacewing jewels, that I just happened to see at the very last minute. Stalked eggs are typical of lacewings.  The larvae are so hungry and ferocious, that if the eggs were grouped the first one to hatch would end up devouring its siblings.

I take it your siblings did not have the luxury of stalks FB?

Here are some more hanging from one of my sotols. The theory is that the stalks ensure a higher birth and survival rate, due to the fact that the larvae have to climb down the stalks.

“Facinating ESP”. Zzzz

While I was on my back with my face buried under foliage trying to capture a shot of these minuscule eggs I glanced over and saw this monster looming above me, in fact I only had to shuffle over a few inches to take this shot.

Ahhhh!

Cicada shells are almost as bizarre as the actual insect.  Pam over there at Digging recently took a great picture of a cicada, riding it’s trusty steed: http://www.penick.net/digging/?p=8861 I am just glad this one did not decide to dismount as I took this shot, oh yes, I would have been sent running wildly into my house, clawing once again at my neck region…I wonder what my neighbors must think?

Moving on…

Purple heart has responded to our Texas august heat by saturating to even deeper shades of purple.

The foliage on my Madame Ganna Walska tropical waterlily is as interesting as the blooms and like the purple hearts, they are also very saturated at this time of the year.

I found this old tomatillo lantern on the floor underneath the mother plant…

…a plant that is threatening to take over an entire corner of the Patch.

Although quite beautiful, this is now the surface film of the sinking mosquito dunk (I featured a few posts back) that has developed in my “everything but the kitchen sink” rainwater collection “system”.  I am not surprised this will kill mosquito larva, but really!  I am now fearful of even using this water on my plants, even though the packaging stipulates it is completely safe.

Finally:

After I removed the mesh from my tomato plants a couple of months ago, I rolled it up tightly and stuffed it underneath my shed.  Today, walking up to get my shovel to plant a new oleander, I noticed that a corner of it was poking out.

I investigated further and found this:

A Texas spiny lizard.

Sceloporus olivaceus

This poor chap had himself completely entangled.  The above picture was taken after about ten minutes of careful snipping with some scissors. The hobbits were very excited to see one of these up close, considering how fast and shy these creatures typically are.  The worst part of the snipping I saved till last, the neck and head, he kept attacking the ends of the snippers. A few final tighter snips and he was free, I cannot tell you how fast that creature took off!

I took the mesh immediately indoors.

I will leave you with this…the Gene Simmons of the butterfly world.

Stay Tuned (once again) for:

“Wilson”

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

This months http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?page_id=13248 photography competition will be judged by Allan Mandell, the theme is: “On The Road Again”

“This is what I am looking for: that choice image you discovered when you were out there on unfamiliar ground with an open mind and open eyes, when you were far away from home or close to where you live. But you still sought out a garden, other than your own, to reveal the soul of the place you were in. Every culture on earth has a way of expressing its essence through a sacred spot, or garden. Maybe your farthest travels have been a few hour’s drive away, or maybe they have been long plane-flights away, no matter. Let me see the beauty you found when you were way out there, tuned into the universal language of the garden.  Let me see your treasures from the road.”

This shot was taken last year on a visit to my homeland and family. This is the stark, gnarled and storybook understory of a particularly old stand of rhododendron shrubs on the grounds of Hoddom Castle Estate in the borders of Scotland, a magical place.

This scene would make a great film set…I think Helena Bonham Carter would be right at home under these invasive bushes?

Oh you wouldn’t? …Sorry Helena.

There really was a fantasy world underneath that light draining canopy.