Artemisia

“I Decapitated a Gopher”

ESPatch Nov 5, 2010 15 comments

There has been lots of brightly colored things hovering and flying around the Patch this week,

most gravitated toward my fragrant mist flowers and celosia that are now in full bloom.

This is an adult male hover fly,

Allograpta obliqua (Say)

These tiny flies have a stunning metallic sheen and are expert fliers. They can hover and even fly backward, an ability possessed by very few insects other than syrphid flies and Gary Numan.

Eyes of the male are holoptic (eyes meet along the dorsal length of its head), those of the female are dichoptic (widely separated). This species may be recognized by the yellow thoracic stripes and abdominal cross-bands, very tribal. Another unusual visitor to the mist flowers this week was this

common checkered skipper,

Pyrgus communis

which gets its name from the checkerboard pattern on its wings. It has really coppery metallic wings, and vivid black and white stripes which appear both on its antennae and on the fringes along the outside edges of its front wings.

Oh just one more…this one was tucking into a salvia leucantha bloom.

While I was messing around in my mist flowers, concentrating and holding my breath as I do in an attempt to steady the camera lens, I heard a noise right next to me. I thought it was the Naboo but as my vision adjusted to the deep shadows I saw these two yellow eyes staring back up at me, the eyes were in an upward roll as it yawned…I was just not prepared!

This neighborhood cat scared me to death, I instinctively muttered a few colorful words out loud (as I always do when this sort of thing happens), followed by the obligatory quick glance behind me to see if anyone heard me. I have no idea why I keep doing this, there is never anybody there…ever, why would there be?

I am in the privacy of my own back garden, crawling around in the undergrowth after all…what was I expecting? To turn around and see a Garden Conservancy-esk crowd in a semi-circle behind me all pulling a shocked expression and shaking their disapproving heads? Ridiculous. The cat was lurking under the cover of these Mexican petunias that are planted in a buried tub to keep them somewhat at bay.

My celosia are also pulling their weight on the insect attractant front…

One of the many reasons I have so much celosia in the Patch is to attract insects, and this plant pulls in them all…bees, hummers, skippers and many more find the plant totally irresistible, including butterflies like this very regal looking monarch.

My Mike Meyers are getting quite large as the year wears on…

My Meyer lemons are slowly but surely ripening,

and a mouth watering candy apple has fully ripened on my dwarf Barbados cherry, oh yes it is all happening!

My artemis powis castle moat is also flowing quite nicely around my King Tut papyrus and canna stock tank, after our recent bit of rain.

But the best thing of all this week came as a gift for the Frank Lloyd Write Fairy House –

A small present was dropped off for my eldest, she was delighted to open it and discover a fairy, small wheel-barrow and watering can. She made quick work of finding just the right place for each artifact, propping up the wheelbarrow upside-down like she has seen me do countless times, she immediately filled up the tiny watering can from one of our stock tanks.

Are those real fairies? Thanks Rock Rose, http://wwwrockrose.blogspot.com/ she has been checking on the house every day after school,

every fairy grove needs some maidenhair ferns.

Now onto some real bodily swelling:

I have had a real ‘Carry On’ with my gopher plants this week,

Carry On…

euphorbia rigida

My gopher plants have been needing a good pruning back for quite some time. The euphorbia family name honors Euphorbus, physician to the King of Mauritania, who used the latex sap from the plant for medicinal purposes, rather then as a general flesh irritant.

I went on an impromptu pruning frenzy to decapitate these plants, cutting them back to where I could see new growth appearing at their base…

“Houston we have a problem”.

“Go ahead Buzz”.

“ESP is out there performing the maneuver…without his gloves on!

This plant’s pruning wounds leak a milky sap which can cause skin irritation on contact, I naturally had to find this out the hard way.

The itchy, welting rash lasted two days, then my daughter got it from clambering up the compost pile! An activity that I keep reiterating as a highly dangerous venture.

“I warned ye about that devil sap ESP”!

“Thanks for that old clever-clog, spinster”.

I met this old clever-clog spinster recently behind one of my giant timber bamboos, she is short on words but lives to offer obvious and really annoying after-the-fact advice. She told me in a croaky, party animal voice that she had submitted her INS paperwork to the Naboo, wiped the Botox Ladies dribble from the side of her mouth, and gave the mole touching, posing witches a hessian bucketful of the finest Gulf Coast Toads as a token offering…I suppose this means she is taking up permanent residency in the Patch? That’s just what I need, another “About the…” page to write that no-one will ever visit or read, right Bob? http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/

Other rather odd observations this week:

A rather unusual artichoke looking growth has formed on my fatsia japonica, is this the start of the flower head?

This caterpillar would be right at home on a coral reef,

…and this old loquat leaf looks like a satellite image of an arid mountain range.

Great tropical colors are still emanating from this canna lily that is almost finished for the year.

Pampas grass plumes catching Autumn breezes,

and a couple of Bobcats, acting very strangely, I hope they have not been at the datura again!

Fall in the Patch…I have many times.

I thought I would finish with a design I have been working up for a client who wanted some color proposals for their recently refurbished home as well as a design of their back yard. The rear landscaping has to incorporate a large swale that runs the entire width of the property. I created a step down deck to break up the linear edge of the house and introduced a meandering and naturalized dry creek bed to take care of the swale and make a feature out of it. Naturally I threw in a couple of Alphonse Karr bamboos in there to soften the edges of the scene to hide some utilities…

Here are some before and after images:

Stay Tuned for:

“Cannibal Nectar”

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

“All Quiet on the Eastern Front”

ESPatch Oct 23, 2010 12 comments

” I must get out there and keep weeding”.

“Relax ESP, your tour of duty (ahem) is over, you must rest now”.

Phew, what a crazy week it has been in the ESPatch. I have actually been watching all five episodes of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner back to back as a form of deep relaxation and depression educing therapy to bring me down to earth a little. As readers, you will be drawing ever closer to the dramatic finale yourselves with the forth riveting installment at the end of this post, I can sense your anticipation.

First there was the build-up to the Conservancy tour, the grueling midnight weeding shifts that involved Davy lamps, loincloths, and copious amounts of mosquito spray (FYI: the Naboo insist on this attire for anyone in the Patch after dark). Then the tour itself happened, what a mad day that was. I cannot remember a time I have talked for so long, by the end of the day I was sounding like:

Marty Funkhouser.

We had a really good time on the tour and thanks so much to all my Patch helpers, and all who visited the Patch on the day. You can read some great accounts and see some pictures at the following links, if you haven’t read them already. I think I took only two pictures the entire day! :

http://www.penick.net/digging/?p=9584

And here:

http://wwwrockrose.blogspot.com/2010/10/i-knew-it-was-going-to-be-great-day.html

Thanks Pam and Rock Rose! If you couldn’t make it, here is a rather wobbly walk-through of the Patch just before the gates were opened. Oh come on Mr circular-bed Sotol! You can grow faster then this!

My daughter sold enough limonada on the big day to purchase a toy she has had her heart set on for quite some time:

These little bundles of fur are called Zhu Zhu pets and when you first meet one they seem harmless enough. We naturally had to purchase two of them to mitigate a potential war breaking out between our two hobbits.

“They can take oor’ lives, but they will never take oor Zhu Zhu pets”

Have you quite finished William?

They make cute snuffling noises, roam around freely and have character shifts when different accessories are attached to them, naturally. Oh yes, initially they seemed like a perfect non-real pet…no mess, no hair drop…but then the realization of the purchase kicked in, the snuffling noises, the squeals, oh the repetition.

I sit here typing on my laptop with two of these creatures running circles around my feet, their chirps and snuffles long having lost their appeal . I am now seriously resisting the urge to get up, get my metal shovel from my shed, and…well, I will leave the rest up to your imagination…I’ll give you Zhu Zhu pets! (I wonder how long their batteries last)?

A couple of days after the tour we had the friendly crew from the Gardener’s Supply Co come over to the Patch.

They spent the day setting up and photographing planted window boxes on the outside of our house for their catalog. After they had left, we found the fantastic surprise they had left for us near my back deck…

I could not believe how many plants they had left us!

My daughter and I have a long history of: “Daddy, why don’t you ever buy pretty plants with flowers?” “Well, I just prefer foliage plants, that’s all.” “But daddy why don’t you…” and on and on this monologue usually continues. Imagine her surprise when she was confronted by this scene as she went down the back steps, she could not believe her eyes. Her expression says it all.

Guess who was thinking more about the box that the plants came in?

Ragamuffin.

Yes, between obnoxious Zhu Zhu’s and garden tours and photo shoots, it has been a busy time in the Patch of late to say the least,

even this Texas spiny lizard seemed more immune to foot traffic and the camera after the tour and shoot, allowing me to get in closer then usual to this extremely shy creature. This was the largest one I have seen to date.

This plant most certainly got a lot of attention from a lot of people. I cannot tell you how many times I said celosia on the day.

The seedpods are now huge, and visually striking set against a backdrop river of artemesia…jumping salmon!

Bluebonnets are also popping up in the Hell Strip. (Thanks once again RR).

I will finish with a couple of shots of the Salt Lick, an infamous Texas barbecue destination. They have recently opened up a side garden and wine tasting house on the property, selling wine, cheese and pate’…

The central fountain is surrounded by gaura.

A huge stand of lantana and numerous roses and salvia line the perimeter of the garden

Inspiring Images of the week:

Peter Allen is the Marketing Director for UC Santa Barbara’s College of Engineering and Scientific Illustrator/Animator for Engineering and the Sciences. As a pre-medical student at UCSB he got his start doing hand drawn/painted cel animation for Developmental Embryology tutorials in 1984.

His subject matter can range from tau protein mutations in Alzheimer’s disease… to tuna fish. Using protein recognition software and numerous scripts and tricks to get the biological and chemical structures into Maya and Mudbox ready for rendering, or traditional modeling and texturing for the more playful artwork that he does in his spare time.

Drum-roll please…as promised, here is the latest installment of the…