Beetles

“A Star is Born”

ESPatch Jul 19, 2011 5 comments

You can see why it is called Texas star hibiscus,

Hibiscus coccineus

and what an ornate and complex bloom it is, on the subject of blooms, this sunflower has taken on storybook proportions.

I planted a lot of different kinds of large sunflower seeds earlier this year but I think the super-dry conditions or perhaps the birds got to the them before they had a chance to grow. Even though I managed to grow just the one, it was well worth it.

I came across this intimidating insect next to a patio I am working on. It was large and adorned some serious tribal markings, it was moving at a frenetic pace on the ground.

This is a cicada killer wasp,

“Sphecius speciosus”

or sometimes called a sand hornet, this large female was extremely busy digging in the earth.

She was digging a burrow beneath a live oak tree, no doubt a good source for future cicada hunting and gathering. Yes folks, I am afraid it is another one of those – I am going to paralyze you, drag you into a dark cave, then my offspring will slowly devour you stories.

After digging a nest chamber (which have been reported to be over a meter long), female cicada killers capture cicadas, paralyzing them with a sting, the female wasp then straddles it and takes off toward her burrow…

yee-haa!

This return flight to the burrow is difficult for the wasp (and I am sure no joyride for the cicada) because the cicada is often more than twice her weight. After putting the cicada in the nest cell, the female deposits an egg on the cicada and closes the cell behind her with dirt…Brrr. On a brighter note, these large wasps are generally non-aggressive towards humans. Still, I was taking no chances photographing this one.

Tiny voice: “Scared of a wasp now ESP?”

Be quiet Jeff and enjoy the ice cream that you are stuck in.

Staying on the subject of rather large insects I unearthed this female

Strategus aloeus julianus

or rhinoceros beetle and it was a monster. I threw a saddle over it and took it for a walk around the garden. These chaps are among the largest of beetles, reaching 60 millimeters in length, but are completely harmless to humans because they cannot bite or sting. Their common names: Hercules beetles, unicorn beetles or horn beetles refer to the characteristic horns borne only by the males of most species in the group. The males use their horns for fighting (usually over food) and impressing a female. If a beetle is feeling threatened and cannot dig itself into the ground, it will make loud hissing squeaks.

“Scared me to death it did.”

The hissing squeak does not do anything but frighten a predator.

Okay that was bad…moving quickly to birds.

This family of doves perched in their “nest” on my Afghan pine, look totally ridiculous. These birds are not noteworthy for their engineering prowess when it comes to the art of nest-building. Oh no, in fact they appear to be totally rubbish at it, but they seem happy huddled together on their teetering platform. The whole scene is very:

JERRY: You ran over some pigeons? How many?
GEORGE: What ever they had. Miranda thinks I’m a butcher but i-i-it’s not my fault is it? Don’t we have a deal with the pigeons?
JERRY: Course we have a deal. They get out of the way of our cars, we look the other way on the statue defecation.
GEORGE: Right! And these pigeons broke the deal. I will not accept the blame for this!

These Monk Parakeets / Quaker Parrots must be nesting somewhere around the Patch as I keep seeing and hearing them squawking and squabbling, and do these birds like to squabble, one carry-on after another. These birds have naturalized in Austin for over twenty years.

This year is most certainly the year of the desert willow or Chilopsis. The hotter the temperatures, the dryer the drought, and the harsher the conditions the better this tree looks. I have never seen so much foliage and blooms as this year. This tree is actually not a true willow, it is called a willow only due to the shape of its leaves, the tree is actually a member of the Bignonia family.

Hummingbirds love it, and it is perfect for a hell-strip or anywhere that suffers reflected heat.

These feather grasses are now up to three years old and still going strong, they are currently in their brown phase awaiting some summer hair combing and trimming.

Or perhaps not.

Celosia is now springing up all over the place, this will put on a great fall show, attaining heights of 6+ feet.

Finally:

“Just like that, not like that, just like that.”

It is the time of phlox in the Shire.

lots and lots of phlox,

what a great word…phlox.

This stock tank planted up with King Tut papyrus and burgundy canna lilies is also relishing the baking heat,

heat that is affecting some of us in some very strange ways.

Stay Tuned for:

“Eviction”

All material © 2011 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

Inspirational image of the week:

I want this as a guest house at the end of the Patch. It is the phlox!

“Oh Yucca!”

ESPatch Jun 11, 2011 11 comments

Oh yucca indeed.

I have been watching one of my soft leaf yuccas turn paler and paler recently. At first I thought it was due to the drought (though I thought this very much out of character with this tough plant). I gave it a little more of the wet stuff but it continued to decline. I decided to dig it out and as I suspected (but was in complete denial about), found the Nazgul had struck once again in the Patch. In fact, not just one of them had been deep mining this time, but three of the retched dark creatures.

“Blinded by their greed, they took them without question, one by one falling into shadow. They will never stop hunting your specimen plants.”

This takes the snout nose weevil’s death count up to three mature Agave americana and this yucca so far this year and has forced me to go into a diatomaceous earth regimen around all my remaining yuccas in an attempt to keep these pests away…time will tell. If this fails I will move onto much stronger methods of control.

I am concerned presently not only with the evil weevil but also this:

Just how much contact does she have with the Naboo when I am away, or not looking? She has begun creating these tribal tortilla “masks” in a matter of seconds of sitting down in a restaurant, and I must say, she is getting rather adept at constructing them. Although she is enrolled in a dual language program, I am pretty sure that the rapid mouth clicks she now practices over dinner are not part of the regular AISD curriculum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c246fZ-7z1w&feature=player_embedded

And even stranger is that Kumo seems to understand and interpret these clicks and clacks as commands. Here he is directing an impending aeronautic turn (his second job).

Talking of masks…

The wolf-like head markings on this young Black and Yellow Argiope

Argiope aurantia

spider, gives potential predators the illusion of a much larger creature.

Here is a close-up of the adult:

I am always happy to see these beneficial spiders around as they seem to be less and less prevalent around the Patch.

The furnace-like Texas winds continue to take their toll in the Patch, frying my Japanese maple and this pepper to a crackling crisp even before summer officially begins on Tuesday.

In stark contrast, this stock tank filled with King Tut Papyrus and various canna lilies relish the heat. A great combination so long as the planter is kept moist. I fill this tank up so that there is an inch of water above the soil level, this keeps it very happy for a couple of weeks, until the next top-up.

Moving on to a suburban front garden make-over:

This one felt a little like:

With the brunt of the work being implemented in a couple of days, followed by a lot of:

and…

Ahhing. “Its that tendon again isn’t it George? I told you not to over-do things.”

Here is where it started…St Augustine grass in decline due to insufficient light from a spectacular front garden tree.

The planting and foundation bed was just too small to add any real presence to this area, everything needed a little help and punctuating definition. The first thing to go was that plastic edging, naturally.

Here is the initial design visualization that I presented to the client. The back-bone of the plan was very well received but the plant selection I proposed needed some tweaking with some client preferred plant selections. Also instead of referencing the dark gray of the trim and roof, it was decided that the grey flagstone should be replaced with a paler color to reference the house color. Moss boulders were substituted for limestone in the final scheme.

Raw materials arrived, in parallel to the

the foundation bed-enlargement, prep work, soil amendment and total grass eradication activities.

The final result:

The front garden now blends out from the house – an aesthetic extension that anchors the home with the decorative flagstone that draws attention and the eye around the focal front tree. The corner front bed receives more sunlight and is planted up with purple fountain grasses and a knockout rose.

Limestone boulders of varying scale (one huge one, naturally) now line the larger house foundation bed and are partially buried to offer an embedded, naturalized look. The colors of the boulders work well against the white of the house and the tan of the granite. The ornamental red urn pops out some warmth and vertical stature to the scene. Pockets of fox-tail ferns will spread like miniature fir woodlands over time, filling in the designated areas.

Once these plants get established most of the sprinklers in this front garden will be permanently turned off, reducing the homeowners water bills.

Inspirational images this week:

Now these trees are tough, just look at that terrain…and to think I moaned about what lurked under the ground at Mt Bonnell! This scene looks like a set from:

The Dragon Tree is related to Agave and Yucca and it is most unusual with its mushroom-like form. It is a rare subtropical tree that is endemic to Canary Islands, Madeira & Cape Verde, where only a few specimens can be found growing naturally on the islands of Tenerife and La Palma in dry bush at the low elevations of the islands’ rocky mountain ranges. Many ancient examples are 20 to 30 feet tall and believed to be up to a thousand years old.

Also known, as the Dragon’s Blood Tree because when the trunk or branch is cut or scarred it produces red sap that resembles blood.

This tree is related to Ladon, an ancient dragon with a hundred heads, each of which spoke in a different voice.

The natives of the Canary Islands harvested the resin of these trees for mummification. They made shields of its bark and colored their hair red with its leaves. The odd branch formations resemble the hundred heads of the dragon. Fossils of this tree have been found in southern France. During the Spanish Conquest, dragon trees were over-harvested; nowadays they are very scarce in their native areas and are protected.

Because of its various medicinal and magical properties, it was sought by various cultures around the Mediterranean, Europe and Africa. Today the Dragon’s Blood is still in use to produce a hard, shiny furniture polish. There is something very otherworldly about these trees and it is hardly surprising to learn that the dragon’s blood resin has been held in high regard by sorcerers and alchemists of old.

Stay Tuned for:

“Across the Gulf”