Beetles

“Raining Beetles”

ESPatch Sep 9, 2010 15 comments

This week in the Patch has been alive with the rather flatulent sounding flying antics of these large bumbling beetles. Loads of them. The short journey to my garden shed has had me ducking, hopping, and occasionally screaming like a young girl as these beasts of burden try to desperately control their flight paths, occasionally dive bombing me like blundering wildebeests on the wing. When navigational and flying skills were handed out, these Figeater beetles (also known as the green fruit beetle or fig beetle)…

Cotinis mutabilis

…apparently missed the entire meeting, they probably just got “turned around” and then distracted by a fig or peach tree on the way. I witnessed one hit into my back porch with such velocity, I swear I could hear the wind get knocked out of it…it audibly wheezed, gathered itself, before going on it’s random way in a kind of stunned, sideways flying fashion…“I’m alright, I’m alright…meant to do that…doing okay now.”

They have turned up this week in plague-like proportions. Figeater beetles are oftenconfused with the green June beetle ,their appearance is quite similar, but the green June beetle is smaller and as the name suggests they are generally witnessed earlier on in the year. To make identification even harder, the only possible geographical crossover of both species occurs right here in the state of Texas. It is a member of the scarab beetle family.

I rather like these blundering iridescent beetles, as do my kids who have been running around catching them in their butterfly net…and those legs and front pincer feet (top image, brr) are as formidable looking as this science fiction splitting datura seed pod…

I have a tray strategically situated under this “ready to hurl” spiny seed pod. What an amazing sight, there must be hundreds of seeds here ready to go “Blah” on my decomposed granite pathway. It is ridiculous that I now consult my wife…“do you think I have the tray positioned in the right place?’ We both look at the seed pod from various angles and position the tray accordingly…“left a bit, yes, right there”… until we agree. I have already planted out a lot of these seeds in my hellstrip.

It is like we are playing one of those skill cranes at Dave and Busters!

“Aye, look at her, she is about tae have a core dump ESP, she’s gonna blow!”

“Ach, ah canna’ believe yer using Scotty’s fake Scottish accent and vulgarities, instead of mine now ESP!”

Poor William.

With the forecast of bad weather on the horizon I thought I should go ahead and get some plants in the ground for one of my clients. I pulled into a nursery, got a bunch of plants and as I approached my trusted steed to load up, I noticed that something was not as it should be…

I have no idea how or when this hole in my window appeared…as if my pick up wasn’t red-neck enough already. It now looks completely ridiculous with dwarf miscanthus grasses poking out the side and a huge Buddah’s belly protruding five feet beyond my tailgate (asomewhat disheveled turban naturally completing the scene). What made the situation even worse was that every time I went over a bump…well exactly.

So how do I try to start to summarizewhat has happened this past week in central Texas? We went from scorching dry conditions…

…to hurricane Hermine, and Hermine was not going to be satisfied until she had packed a punch with lots and lots and lots of rain. Oh, and did she deliver!

Some areas around Austin ended up at around the 8″ mark at the end of a night and day of sustained heavy rains. My pathways turned into running streams. I could hear the spirals of the hurricane hit my metal roof in waves whilst I was lying in my bed grinning like an insane Cheshire cat.

With every wave of rain my grin widened.

The noise of the storm brought with it the sound of tiny scampering feet (non-feline) followed by the inevitable late night, rather poltergeist sounding…

“Mommy it’s here!”

This midnight wandering is always followed by some predictable groaning…“No, no, no…Go back to bed, its late”…shortly before everyone immediately ends up in our bed…(the ESP / Walton’s ‘norm in a storm’ reaction)!

When this happens, my five year old daughter transforms immediately into a rugby union scrum-half, she proceeds to take full-advantage of her luxurious (I’m in my parents bed) position and for no apparent reason proceeds to repeatedly kick me in the kidneys until I am teetering on the edge of my side of the bed, bruised, battered and curled into a submissive fetal position. It does not matter how I react or try to anticipate her abusive nocturnal habits, over (subconscious) time, she always has me in a check mate position (the edge of the bed) by approximately 4am. (A number that is ironically comparable to the strategic chess / body moves it usually takes her to get me there).

She is a Russian Master!…Paige Nosleepnifcofv.

Naturally this is perfect timing on her part to totally ensure that I break all natural biorhythms, ensuring, once again, complete sleep deprivation. The ‘quacking-goose’ I-phone alarm goes off at precisely the moment that I fall back to sleep…6:00am – kindergarten…Ahhh.

Back to the Patch…

This little chap (I believe it is some type of squirrel treefrog) was enjoying all the wet weather in the bottom of this toy bucket.

My Celosia on the other hand had buckled over onto the sidewalk in the soggy conditions. I placed a few large rocks at their bases to support them. I am hoping they will regain their composure as we dry up a little.

The returning and reflected sun hit this gazing ball perfectly, illuminating the underside of the leaves of my Mexican lime tree that has made a pretty decent return after I cut it back to the ground after last winter’s freezes.

This Mexican Petunia immediately responded to having its large underground container filled up with the wet stuff.

I will leave you all to contemplate this rather mysterious scene from my garden…

It looks like a bunch of tiny red light bulbs devouring some paper wasps wings?

Inspirational image of the week:

The balconies of the “Cactus House” apartment building in Rotterdam were designed to maximize outdoor gardening space for tenants. The splaying stack of slabs creates big terraces for gardening and the irregular shape allows sun to enter from multiple angles.

The cactus house reminds me of my pine cone cactus:

I have been meaning to do this for a while…

Stay Tuned for:

“TIMBER!”

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

“Fighting Lantana and Bermuda”

ESPatch Apr 30, 2008 3 comments

So here we go – my first blog entry!

My girlfriend (later to become my wife) and I moved into our first house about seven years ago in Austin, Texas. We were immediately drawn to its petrified long-leaf pine walls, high ceilings, and close proximity to downtown. The house had just been remodeled by two green architects so it was in really good shape – restored, using original materials, to its original Victorian look below. We had a couple of ‘energetic’ Springer Spaniels at the time so the back yard needed to be of a sufficient size – lucky for us it was – it even came with a towering Post Oak perfectly situated central at the rear of the lot. We bought the house – we moved in – we started painting – we finished painting – (we hated masking) – the usual.

And time passed.

And the lantana and ligustrums grew and grew.

Austin Texas – 1890

We believe this was the original owner.
And are those fields in the background?!

We quickly erected the obligatory chain-link fence and let out the dogs to explore their new domain, well at least part of it, 6th sense told them not to venture too deep into the darkened realm of Lantana. It rained one day and with the weeds and grass past my knees, I realized I needed a lawnmower,- quickly. And so my deep rooted (ahem) hatred for Bermuda grass was born.

And time passed.

And the lantanas and lugustrums grew and grew.

Now don’t misunderstand me – I don’t hate lantana (I do hate Bermuda) – in fact I have just recently planted some of the creeping variety, – there was just way too much of it, and all in the wrong place. Now for some reason my industrial “trimmer” style mower came off the factory line with a severe adversity to starting, and staying started! (not good when it is 100+ degrees outside). I began to realize that the merest touch of the plastic blade against the woody stem of a 4ft lantana was all that it took to obliterate it and send me spiraling into a heat indexed five minute, rope pulling, cursing frenzy. . . The lantana would simply have to go – only it turned out it wasn’t going to be that simple, in fact, it was going to be very hard indeed!

A Snails Pace – This went a lot slower than anticipated – about 3 Months slower – one stubborn tap-root at a time.

Anyone who has tried to dig up a mature lantana knows it is the job for a pick axe (or 2) and raw, primordial, aggression. I say primordial due to the seemingly endless grunts that are heard when trying to extract an intact 15ft tap-root (after your 5th extraction that’s how deep down they feel). We probably had 40 root-canals to go plus another 8 in the front of the house. We did initially try to transplant some of the plants in a more suitable location but they seemed not to like the transplant process one little bit – my experience with a lot of ‘woody’ shrubs incidentally. We eventually prevailed and celebrated the last Tap-root thrown onto the shrub pile – we were done! I thought naively – how difficult could the Bermuda Grass eradication be after this?

. . . . Quite difficult indeed as it turned out.

Oh and what is this on the Post Oak?…Staggering camouflage.

After clearing out all the lantana a rather strange thing happened. The space under the Post Oak suddenly became inhabitable, and I started to think about how this
terrain may be utilized. A rough plan was hatched which was centered around a water feature. The Bermuda Grass would just have to wait a little while longer – this was
way more exciting!

I found myself eager to work on something a little more creative than hacking out tubers. Initial layouts led to more refined plans that encompassed the back yard in its entirety. I became determined to carve the land roughly into the shape of the these sketches – subsequently an obsession was formed that remains with me today. I would spend the next five years making and learning from my mistakes, buying books and generally loitering around garden centers.

This blog will expose some of the funnier/scarier/and ridiculous stories of this adventure. I will also throw in some pictures and annotations as to what is currently cool, strange or bizarre in my yard. In fact here are some now. . . .

My Agave starting to bloom . . going up (about a 1ft a day!) detail of the flowers

Giant elephant ear growing fast! amazing form, tossing the caber!

More on the water feature saga and how it attacked me later!

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