Amaranth

“Twelve ESP Days of Christmas”

ESPatch Dec 14, 2009 16 comments

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me,

Twelve mother of millions,

Eleven pipers piping,

Ten blooms are blooming,

Nine ladies dancing, (what?…I had nothing!)

Eight stink horns stinking, (okay still struggling)!

Seven swans a-swimming,

The Botox Lady’s spraying,

FIVVEEE “precious” rings…

Four inflatable turds!

Three Naboo Men,

Two anoles in love,

And a Tahoe’s occupants did flee!

I have been feeling musically inclined of late, can you tell?

Moving on…Oh yes, we are getting well into the Christmas spirit here in the Patch. Our tree is up, our moth-eaten stockings are hung, and more importantly, there are a couple of excited hobbits that inspect both objects on a nightly basis, with magical childhood anticipation.

I know what this one wants… a new “amphibious” Thomas the Tank Engine, this one stopped running as soon as it’s wind-up engine hit this water feature, like he cared.

Looking like Hogwarts candles illuminating the main hall, these amaranth seed pods give the impression that they are under some form of enchantment, hovering in space.

The candles are hovering all around the patch.

This hall was the inspiration for Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movie. Only Oxford students of this Christ Church college are allowed to dine here. Staying on the Harry Potter theme…

“Almost got it”!

This seedpod looked remarkably like the Golden Snitch, albeit a little rustier. This rogue snitch must have left the quidditch field and got hung up on my back fence some time ago.

Southern Green Stink Bug.

Nezara viridula

I assume that this evil green chomper is eating nuts from my pecan trees, they love nuts, kernel spot of pecan is caused by the feeding of this stink bug. These guys will also munch on practically any food crop they can sink their nasty teeth into. This one flew off before I had time to hit it with an over-sized mallet. They remind me of the aliens in The Fifth Element.

Although it is not a welcome sight, the form of this bug is really quite something, with it’s wings nesting in a recess on the top of it’s low-profile body. It’s sculpted under-carriage. Perhaps what is needed to eradicate this pest is a rather over-sized, and extremely nasty looking brown tongue, to lick the bugs from foliage?

“Eeewww! Watch out for that sotol, giant tongue”!

You have got to be kidding me! (knees knock together, left leg flies uncontrollably upward, jaw involuntarily wiggles left to right, hands clench, you know the drill, right Germi?).

“ahhhhllghmoooocall that a tonguemooooo.”

Can you guess what this nasty looking cow looking tongue once was? Go on, I dare you…quite bizarre, it even had the texture of a tongue when I squeezed the edge of it…errrrr….Gross, well you knew I was going to! Touching this cold tongue sent me into an involuntary silly walk around my decomposed granite pathways, back to the relative safety of my Galleon ship home.

This giant timber bamboo is really visible now that the pecan tree that it is growing through has lost all of it’s leaves. The bamboo has now grown above the canopy of this tree.

This pecan is destined for the chop very soon, the sooner the better. It is really scrappy anyway, dropping this and a bit of that all throughout the year. If it isn’t dropping pecan husks it is dropping the droppings from the multitudes of web-worms that usually inhabit the tree. Have I said it is always dropping something?

I am continuously sweeping this concrete patio. I have another pecan to the right of this one that will also fall under the wood-cutters axe soon enough, when the three giant timber plants below it mature. I am under no illusion that this bamboo grove will also shed lots of stuff, but bamboo sheaths are much easier dealt with than the messier “products” that the Pecan trees drop.

Another tree that I am continuously hacking at is my Vitex. This tree was in pretty bad shape when we first move into our house. I have made it my goal to keep shaping and trimming this shrub-tree to raise it’s canopy to new higher heights. Here it is on the right after today’s most recent haircut.

Talking of hacking back…This red passion vine now resembles a mass of seaweed after our recent freezes. I wondered what manner of monsters were laying in waiting for me in it’s murky depths. I reluctantly went to the shed to get my gloves and pruners. This vine did not freeze at all last year and naturally it got quite enormous. As I approached it with my pruners a large tentacle lashed out of the undergrowth and encircled my arm.

Staying on the subject of sea creatures, check out Korean designer, chul an kwak’s dynamic tables…

Try sitting on one of these if you can, before they scuttle away and bury themselves in the mud-flats.

Sotols, agaves, ghosts, gophers and bottles all just swooned through the cold night temperatures with ease. I love this bed!

As did this new addition, Red Carpet Sedum.

Sedum spurium ‘Elizabeth’

“I hereby give this sedum my frosty blessing”.

Inspirational image of the week…

“I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daises in their thousands,ground ivy, hawkweed,and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn”.

William Henry Hudson, author and naturalist.

(Thanks for this JuJu)

(1841-1922)

Stay Tuned for:

“Has He Been?”

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

“Wind in our Sails”

ESPatch Dec 5, 2009 12 comments

“Climb the rigging to the curtain rail”

“Secure the jib to the TV”

“Yarr, there is a squall coming”…

…and the squall has really been catching the mainsail in our living room. That’s right, our front room now resembles the “sailing” Monti Python building in The Meaning of Life, although I wish I could say, like them, we were sailing our building on the high seas of international finance.

Okay I’m exaggerating like I usually do…our house isn’t this big. It has though, developed an almost galleon ship expression on the inside. The polythene sheets nailed up to our walls have been under immense strain with the strong winds we have been experiencing of late.

The wooden “planks” strewn here and there just add to the nautical illusion, along with my new parrot from Pet Smart and the old telescope that I dug out out of my shed, that is now positioned in arms reach of my Lazy-boy. We also have these two old swaying chain lamps that fit in perfectly to the whole galleon scene, complete with cobwebs! Arrrrr, the Back Pearl it be.

Our front “room” even sounds like a ship at this point, groaning and flapping around. When the wind catches the “main-wall,” there is an audible sighing sound as the polythene bellows out then sucks back against the wall. When this happens I boom out “Tack” and lunge for my telescope. It is almost as if the walls are, are…breathing…

Aaahhhhhhh!

“HARD-A-PORT”!

Here is our home-ship catching the prevailing Arctic wind.

My wife took this picture late the other night, right after I had just finished watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Oh yes, watching a movie is now a character building experience, but a trilogy is potentially life threatening.

If you are not a regular reader to the East Side Patch, this damage was caused by a Chevy Tahoe, a vehicle that decided it should take an alternative route in preference to the boring monotony of the straight road that runs in front of our house.

It slammed in a possessed “Christine” fashion, straight into the front corner of our house:

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/09/dude-wheres-my-car/

Here is the East Side Patch galleon ship as seen from the outside. I am thinking of getting a figurehead erected on the impact corner where the Tahoe hit, to commemorate the time that our house had internal “sails”. I am thinking of something on the lines of this…

What?!!

Do you think it would be a little “too much” if I secured and angled this eight foot high figurehead from the side of our house, hoisting her into position via an elaborate series of winches and pulleys? Visualize it, this corner of the house does look like the prow of a galleon ship after all, it would look great. Mmm, on second thoughts, the sight of this maidenhead may cause yet another accident.

“Resilient are these little Hobbits.“

Naturally there are always lots of chores to be done on a ship, chores like swabbing the decks? This was actually more like a Jack Ass stunt, he went careering through this water congregation point at high speed, then lost control and performed what can only be described as a double axel into an arabesque maneuver. Hence why he is out of frame…I just wish my camera had been on movie mode.

(photo courtesy of Mike Field)

The biting breeze in our sails carried our “house-boat” to a small island, we anchored and rode to shore in a small rowing boat, taking the opportunity to stretch our legs and observe some of the native wild flora.

This Fatsia japonica bloom is the largest one I think I have ever had. On our next warm day these flowers will be full of flies and many other insects. You can see the younger green blooms start off like unripe blackberries before exploding into these fireworks, complete with all the fine “sizzly” bits, that stand out in the deep shade.

“Hahah! You call these fireworks ESP”!

The oddest of spiky-salmon pink blooms, and one of the final flowers to develop late into the year. They sort of look like winter crystals.

Another end of year task, and one of my least favorite activities…

“The boring leaf scooping has officially begun”!

Lucky for me this year I have a helper to alleviate the mind-numbing monotony of this incredibly irritating and seemingly endless task. She actually likes to do it! Who am I to argue? Between the overhead Post oak and the embedded Bog Cyprus, a lot of scooping happens for the next month or so in the Patch. Are those some more Mexican limes she is protecting in her pocket?

Staying with citrus…these Meyer Lemons are trying their hardest to ripen before the winter fronts kick-in hard, they are almost there, j j just a few more days, I have moved this container up onto the back-deck of the ship. These will come in really useful when our house-boat takes to the high-seas once again…they will be really good for curbing scurvy on the voyage home, and, well, I am a “limey” after all.

Copper Canyon Daisy

We awoke this morning to a crisp and extremely cold day. Last night was clear and a hard freeze had reached into the island with icy fingers, touching plants here, nipping others there. Walking around it was clear, we had gone from a summer-end garden to a winter garden overnight…the casualties where numerous, I knew they would be. I was just hoping that the freeze had finally killed all my “Mother of Millions” plants, before they just engulf my entire garden. I will not be growing this one again, waaaay too scary.

Well, not quite, but lets just say it has looked an awfully lot better.

My cannas, my beautiful cannas. All have collapsed into a mass of slightly poached “soft” leaves.

As have the Hoja Santa, reduced to a bunch of old hanging handkerchiefs.

Though the leaves make great pixie-hats.

The amaranth’s foliage has also been nipped, accentuating the Santa seedpod colors, very festive for Christmas.

These seed heads will get to about a foot or so in length.

Even the sea froze.

Even more disturbing were these blood droplets, they were everywhere and in different parts of the island. Was this the work of the Naboo?

Or was my purple heart bleeding?

These mounds of seaweed are oozing purple blood. I decided not to cut it all the way back, allowing what is left of the plant some protection from the slushy top covering, it is looking like we are in for another freeze tonight. Perhaps this will spell the end of the…

Finally! We have all been nightly blood donors for the last few months.

Shadows from the ship’s Giant Timber Bamboo Rigging.

Sea-salted-succulents make for a delicious on-board snack.

We waited for the sea to unfreeze, then set on our long voyage back to our “pier” (ahem) and beam foundation, back to the Patch. It was good to finally be on our way, with the wind in our walls.

Inspirational Photo of the Week

Yes…plonk some of these giant baggies on your Hell-Strip and you will be the talk of your neighborhood. Perhaps not the best-liked, but the talk none-the-less. One or two of these bad-boys should ensure that no weeds will grow in your strip ever again, with the added advantage of gardening at waist height.

Just thinking out of the raised bed!

Talking of raised beds…imagine sleeping in here:

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