Animals

“House Elf”

ESPatch Sep 16, 2012 8 comments

I was delighted to find out recently that our family had inherited a new house-elf…”Kreature-Kumo”.

On arrival at the Patch he made himself immediately at home roaming and grumbling down our hallway. He has kept himself quite occupied this past week dusting pictures, getting the kids up for school, cooking full-English breakfasts etc. In fact now I cannot imagine our existence without him.

Adorning some old rags and a particularly acute case of halitosis, it appears he has a propensity for devouring large amounts of small plastic toys, postmen and all manner of disgusting things at the bottom of the garden.

Naughty, stinky Kreature-Kumo!

Freshening rains, cooler temperatures and darkened days have provided a welcome reprieve from the Texas sun this week. Sad loquats perked up, a couple of burgundy fountain grass were flattened and poor cactus-man (jr) took one for the team from a rather flatulent and highly accurate bird…

The irony here continues, allow me to recap on this opuntia paddle’s tragic existence and amazing resurrection story:

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/10/halloween-2009/

I spent 4 years pruning back a few opuntia paddles to enlarge them for a very specific and rather horrendous Patch experiment. Some of you may remember the endeavor.

I decided I was going to gouge eye-holes (and carve a mouth) in this opuntia paddle after seeing a picture of a successfully carved paddle in a popular gardening magazine.

After I had performed the “procedure” my massive cactus paddle went almost immediately into shock (I had apparently carved overtly enlarged features) as did the rest of his family (they shared a common root system).

Stress lines around the eyes appeared,

moisture seemed to be leaving his emaciated body on a daily bases, he grimaced and so did I every time I had to walk past him.

And then finally…

This is where it starts getting strange.

Some time later, after he was laid to rest, another cactus paddle mysteriously grew back from the roots at the exact same place and angle,

only this time he returned from his shallow grave with two “already formed” eye holes (evolutionary survival tactics…I am convinced), I couldn’t believe it.

I inserted a tiny glass monocle into the smaller of his “new”eyes (I have no idea why), and now, after enduring all of this, a bird goes and does this:

Poor junior.

I think he (the original paddle) may be trying to send me a message from across the veil.

“I have a “Cactus-Man” coming through for a gardening person on my left. I am getting an image of a green thumb and he is showing me three letters “ES..D?

He is communicating a horrible accident involving multiple family members…he keeps repeating Fis…Fisk…

Fiskars?

Errr…

Moving sharply along:

It is very sharp up here on this golden barrel plateau but well worth the hike, the cactus continues to put out these amazing flowers.

Here are the barrels shrouded behind Juniors resurrected family.

This is what is left of my hydrangea:

It took 6 months of steady decline for the plant to reach this minimalist /completely dead stage.

Giant timber bamboo always looks very tropical after rain,

if only my garden shed was an all-teak construction…

…exactly.

Imagine this structure with

some Alphonse Karr bamboo planted around the foundation.

My soft leaf yucca,

Yucca recurvifolia

is producing pups as fast as I can plant them.

This is its second asparagus-looking flower spike of the year.

Pride of Barbados have nearly finished depositing seeds from their dug-out canoes.

Seen any of these colorful velvet moths lurking in your salvias?

This is a southern pink moth,

Pyrausta inornatalis

and this is its larva:

Photograph by Donald R Riley

I have read that these polka dotted chaps can demolish a stand of salvia but I never have had this problem myself.

Finally:

Congratulations on your advancement from the daisies to being a fully fledged Brownie!

Now, back to the Patch with you,

you have Autumn chores to do if you want to get that professional metal detector.

“Chores!”

Stay Tuned for:

“Agavephobia”

All material © 2012 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

Why am I struggling with this image of the week?

School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“Mind Your Dual Language!”

ESPatch Sep 2, 2012 4 comments

Finally School is back in session.

My wife and I had made it through another summer with only a few permanent psychological scars,

and a couple of new minor facial twitches.

One of which I involuntarily tried out as my cranium passed dangerously close to this rather large colony of harvestmen.

Left is a crane fly (and no it is not a giant mosquito and no, they do not consume mosquitoes); center is a house spider and right is our main-man, the harvestman. All of these insects are commonly and confusingly referred to as “Daddy Long Legs”.

The true daddy long legs here is the harvestman which is an arachnid, but not a spider, and now my head is hurting.

Another new insect for me this week is this:

White-striped Longtail Skipper Butterfly

Chioides catillus

“Your suffering will be legendary for this ESP.”

These common and wild (pinhead) Buttonbushes

Cephalanthus occidentalis

are magnets for a host of insects, particularly skippers, sphinxes and butterflies.

Moving Along:

Everything looks good against the softening backdrop of the hardy bamboo muhly grass.

Muhlenbergia dumosa

Like this crowd of tiny stone crop looking very ethereal in the late afternoon light.

Or perhaps it is a marauding army of tiny skeletons? Ahhh…

I digress.

These yellow bitterweeds are creating a nice splash of color among the muhly in my hell strip,

as are purple fountain grasses that are starting to prime.

It is the time of the psychedelic beautyberry,

Callicarpa americana

a time to get into shape for the winter?

“Give me five more irritating rodent!”

Other eventful events this week:

The crowning of Princess Salvia,

and the ripening of some red-hot tom-tom drums, (the Naboo percussion instrument of choice).

There was an event equally as hot this week…

The 22nd annual Austin hot-sauce festival. This is where Texans eat some of the hottest hot sauce imaginable in some of the hottest temperatures imaginable, oh and was it hot this year.

One step outside of the above breezy structure after dipping a tortilla chip into some “Ass-Burn” hot sauce and trust me, you were…

I really do need to stop embedding this image.

The hot-sauce winners this year: http://www.austinchronicle.com/Market/HotSauce/

Ever wondered what happens to a stock tank full of King Tut papyrus if it is allowed to dry up and bake for a day in a large tin, under the Texas sun?

Not a pretty sight.

Some of these will recover when I soak the roots but a lot of these will need to be clipped back to the base.

Duranta erecta ‘Sapphire Showers’ (Picotee Sky Flower)

A die-back perennial here in central Texas, this shrub blooms sporadically all summer, give it plenty of room though, it is a sprawler. Supposedly it requires full sun, but this one performs admirably under the heavy shade canopy of my post oak.

Inspirational Images of the Week:

Yes folks it is another tiny cabin in the forest, what is my obsession with these structures?

Stay Tuned for:

“Distracting Vampires”

All material © 2012 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.