Bermuda Grass

“Voodoo”

Big voodoo no-no’s:

  • If you lay a broom across the doorway at night, a witch can’t come in and hurt you.
  • Having a woman visit you the first thing on Monday mornings is bad luck for the rest of the week.
  • Don’t borrow or lend salt because that is bad luck.
  • If you sweep trash out of the house after dark you will sweep away your luck.
  • Don’t shake a tablecloth outside after dark or someone in your family will die.
  • To stop a Voodoo spell being placed upon you, acquire some bristles from a pig cooked at a Voodoo ritual, tie the bristles into a bundle and carry them on you at all times.
  • If a woman sprinkles some salt from her house to yours, it will give you bad luck until you clean the salt away and put pepper over your door sill.
  • If a woman wants her husband to stay away from other woman, she can do so by putting a little of her blood in his coffee, and he will never quit her.
  • If a woman’s husband dies and you don’t want her to marry again, cut all of her husband’s shoes all in little pieces, just as soon as he is dead, and she will never marry again.
  • You can give someone a headache by taking and turning their picture upside down.
  • You can harm a person in whatever way you want to by getting a lock of his hair and burning some and throwing the rest away.
  • You can make a farmer’s well go dry by putting some soda in the well for one week, each day; then drawing a bucket of water out and throwing it in the river to make the well go dry.
  • Never wear the same iced turban more then two consecutive summer days or you will certainly get involved in an automobile accident.

In Voodoo spells, the “cure-all” was very popular among followers.  The cure-all was a Voodoo spell that could solve all problems. There were different recipes in Voodoo spells for the cure-all; one recipe was to mix…

naturally, with sulfur and honey.  The mixture was placed in a glass, which then had to be rubbed against a…

and then the mixture was required to be sipped slowly…I would imagine so!

This little spider looked like it was wearing a serious voodoo mask.  These tiny spiders have large eyes considering the size of their bodies and are very active hunters, their excellent eyesight is used for stalking prey.  Before pouncing on the victim, jumping spiders attach a line of silk from which they can dangle should they fall.

Here is a diagram depicting exactly how these little creatures have evolved to their all-encompassing vision:

Not much gets by this chap.

Like a drone on an alien moonscape, very martian.

Their well-developed internal hydraulic system extends their limbs by altering the pressure of body fluid within them.  This enables the spiders to jump without having large muscular legs like a grasshopper.  Most jumping spiders can jump several times the length of their body.

This photo shoot was going well until I made a sudden lumbering movement due to the circulation being cut off in my left leg trying to get some decent shots.

At which point it turned and decided to jump directly onto the lens of my camera, I got this shot in as a panicked reaction, then it appeared over the top edge of the camera right next to my face,,,and silhouetted against the sun, it looked 10 x its size… a customary conniption naturally ensued, complete with camera-drop, which was actually more of a throw then a drop. Jumping spiders will turn to examine objects like my camera with the more accurate anterior median eyes, with which they identify the interloper as prey, natural phenomenon, possible threat, or potential mate.  This leads them to behave in a manner suggestive of curiosity, since they are highly visual creatures that use their anterior median eyes to assess objects of interest, they must, by necessity, bring anything of interest into their visual field, including my face.

“Lettin’ a tiny spider get you all r r r rilled up ESP, you need to chill in the Patch and get me some of dat Jimson weed”.

How about you tryin’ some of dat toothpaaaste?

Remember my puzzling imploding and mealy tomatillos?

This was my harvest before I took great delight in pulling out the shriveled plants that have annoyed me for ages.

Zanthan Gardens http://www.zanthan.com/gardens/gardenlog/ suggested that I may be picking them too late. I took her advice and even though the fruit was not at all close to filling their husks I picked a few and cut them open…they were perfect, small but good.

This batch did go on to make a great spicy salsa.

My celosia is creating a shimmering burgundy and white hue in the front of the Patch, many of these plants are listing after the recent winds. I will put up with them a little while longer.

Fire and ice.

With temperatures ducking down low at night the first frost damage is visible, yes folks it is time once again for the traditional hanging of the green hoja santa hankerchiefs…

This is the first plant in the Patch to visually inform me that it got cold the night before. Some other plants appear to relish the cooler night temperatures…

more artemesia and

ghost plant always seem to have a spring in their roots when temperatures dip.

Fatsia japonic getting ready to bloom, surprisingly there is little fly activity so far this year. These blooms are usually completely covered in flies even at this stage.

“Hey, I have been busy dealing with my loosening fingernails”! 

Err…Brrrr, Jeff!

The cactus fruit on this opuntia has obviously not yet been discovered by the Naboo, it is the traditional drum preference of the tribe.

Bluebonnets on the rise.

Finally:

A visit to Inner Space Cavern…

We went down a dark tunnel, some small knuckles turned white, and little faces got very serious as the light dimmed.

Almost immediately we were in another dimension. It is amazing to think dreary I35 was right above us, if you listen carefully you can hear the 18 wheelers very quietly above, two very different worlds so close together.

The best part of the day was some good old-fashioned panning for gold:







It is time, emotionally prepare yourselves:

Oh yes, the awful moment has finally caught up with us I am afraid…I can barely bring myself to embed it…b…bu…but, well I am afraid it just has to be done – this is a voodoo post after all, it would, COULD not be completed without this “dodgy moment” from a rock legend (edited for you and me both garner) :-)

Inspirational Images of the week:

I am by no means a great proponent of having a large expanse of lawn, but if you do have a propensity for the dark St Augustine side, this intriguing product just may be somewhere in your future garden shed…


From the designer:

“The grass that is cut is considered to be the useless remainder while cutting grass. The product “Muwi” benefits the third party in numerous ways by the act of cutting grass in order to create fair grass. “Muwi” first acknowledges the entire size of the land and automatically cuts the grass. The cut grass, which is created upon cutting the grass, is stored inside. As the cut grass begins to accumulate inside the machine, “Muwi” constructs and compresses the cut grass into two types of blocks. Then this cut grass is no longer a remainder that needs extra efforts to be thrown out or cleaned up. It rather becomes balls for children to play with or a chair to sit on or any other opportunity. These newly created blocks give care without even realizing it. Furthermore, after these blocks are used and left behind, they naturally go back to its neighboring nature in time. It is circulated again through nature and gives nature and us the natural consideration”.

Discs can be used for compost.

Designer: Yuli Sung


Stay Tuned  for:

“The Golden Ticket”


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

“Event Horizon”

Lots to do, lots to do.

In preparing for the upcoming tour I started with the big stuff, my philosophy being the big stuff a) takes longer and b) generally generates a lot more mess. This included the chopping down of the dead giant timber bamboo, the pruning of trees and yes, yet another delivery of granite. I plan to finish with the small cosmetic toppings, the “hide it under the carpet” mulch, cake sprinkles etc. One area I do not need to worry about are these bamboo muhly’s

Muhlenbergia dumosa


that flank the approach into my front garden from the street. Considering that I only planted this drift at the start of this year they have done really well, this plant loves Hell-Strips. I have read in different places that this grass is slow growing, mmm really?  And these were planted in the worst soil ever!   These “Muhli” work really well to hide and soften this concrete walkway (a place where no weeds can exist, although Bermuda grass naturally tries) and like my Mexican feather grasses on steroids, they add some fantastic hazy animation to any scene with only the slightest of breezes. A Texas tough, deer resistant ornamental grass, plant it to catch the westerly setting sun for a serious late afternoon light show, you will not be disappointed!

As an added visual bonus the color of these grasses  perfectly match the colors of our house.

Staying front side, this welcome mound mysteriously appeared overnight.  I can only surmise that a member of the Naboo called it in to Custom Stone with a high pitched series of clicks and clacks. The tribe has been laying low since I informed them about the tour…I fear they might be plotting something as all the spiny seed pods on my datura have suddenly vanished.

With a cold front blowing through central Texas I scurried out to get my old wheelbarrow, on seeing the mound of granite, it predictably released all the air from its lone tire in future hauling defiance. My wheelbarrow is quite geriatric at this point, it has splits in its joints, lost bolts on its front wheel (which causes the wheel to erratically move left and right when in motion) and it groans constantly with a full load like a

This groaning increases in volume depending how much substrate you dare to put in it.  I know exactly how much my old friend can handle at this point,  I feared this latest mound of decompose granite may cause it to finally keel over, exhaling it’s final rubbery breath out of it’s wobbly tire, but it prevailed once again.

Weed suppressant laid down, granite administered, mounds developed.  Here is my neighbor’s new Hell Strip, a bit sparse I know, but it sure is an improvement on what it was.  I have a bunch of seeds planted in here, it will be fun to see what emerges.  Changing flat weedy Hell-Strips, one strip at a time.

My Hell Strip side has filled in pretty well considering it was also only started early this year,

the Blackfoot daises have gone berserk with all our recent moisture…

…this plant provides great summer color, the colors and “yolk” of this daisy pair very well with bulbine, another Texas trooper.

Also in the Hell-Strip my bluebonnet seeds that my hobbits and I spent an entire afternoon shelling (Thanks RR http://wwwrockrose.blogspot.com/) have broken through the top crust of granite…I know you are supposed to just scatter them topside then stomp them in, but I could see my local mockingbirds licking their beaks as soon as I went out front to disperse my small bowl of seeds. Determined to give them a fighting chance I scraped my heel across the granite and made sure to bury them, just a little. Interestingly they just popped up the top layer of granite as they grew in small tectonic plates.

Some final front shots…

Salvia leucantha is in full fuzzy flight, and my magenta and white celosia seed heads…

…just keep snaking their way further and further toward the ground.  A lot of these have already started to drop seed, already prematurely seeding the next generation!  They are ruining my annual seed gathering custom with their accelerated aging, oh well, I have plenty more “normal ones” to harvest.

And finally Gregg’s mist flower, basket grass (right) and artemesia (top)…provide great silvery-blue color.

Moving On…

I witnessed a tree fern strangling this poor miscanthus seed head…

…and an infestation which fell on me like ash as I brushed against it to do some trimming. At first I thought it was some sort of scale…

but on closer inspection it was equally as bad…Whiteflies!

Hemiptera Aleyrodidae


And they were amassing a despicable army on the underside of the leaves on my white pomegranate tree. Without magnification these minute insects resemble flying dandruff. With magnification they look like moths but in fact they are closer related to scale insects…I knew it!  Both adult and nymphs feed by sucking plant juices, sticky honeydew excreted by the flies creates mold that then interferes with photosynthesis, which retards plant growth causing leaf drop.  Not good.

While I was messing around taking these shots I decided to pull on some vines that were growing up into an adjacent conifer, I dislodged one of these…

and immediately received one of these:

I could have been stung a lot more as it took me a while to dance around my sotol and perform a strange sideways shuffle around a large agave to emerge, hopping in a very John Cleese fashion over a moss boulder to the open safety of one of my pathways.

We finished up the week with a visit to my favorite Austin event: “The Mediterranean Festival,” where some crazy Geek…I mean Greek dancing ensued:

Great music, a truly “capital” event.

Imagine if they had used bamboo scaffolding!


Stay Tuned  for:

“Maverick”


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


Inspirational “light” reading of the week:

Nerd Alert…Nerd Alert…Ne


This fascinating concept comes from a graduate student project at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London several years ago entitled Growing a Hidden Architecture. Christian Kerrigan proposed an awe-inspiring series of contraptions: collars, tourniquets, hinges, corsets, and belts that could be attached to still-growing trees, thus bending and shaping their growth into a functioning, sea-ready ship. Christian Kerrigan investigates how man’s ability to control his surroundings is intimately linked with his advancing capabilities of using technology. Christian says “We have reached a point in our evolution where we are now capable of creating design criteria to manipulate natural growth and development.” Here are a some inspiring drawings he produced to visualize his concept.

All images are from “Growing A Hidden Architecture” by Christian Kerrigan

Copse View: as the trees slowly evolve the ‘Amber clock’ strapped to the tree registers the passing of time with a two hundred year hourglass.

“By controlling the manipulation of refined armatures, calibrating devices and designed corsets,” Kerrigan writes, “the system is capable of controlling the growth of a ship inside the forest. The ship will grow over a period of 200 years and will exist as a hidden architecture inside the trees. The ship growing in the forest is the ship from the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ a tale of man’s relationship to mortality.” In a particularly fantastic detail, “the artificial system harvests resin from the trees to measure time passing”:

Slowly growing to completion, the end of the system within the forest is signaled by the Amber Clock, the resin cycles in the trees keeping time. The armatures alter the geometries of the copse with technologies, which are spliced into the hull of the ship.

Macresco: The corset strapped around the tree creates the formwork for the extruded hull section

The ship growing in the forest is the ship from the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, a tale of man’s relationship to mortality.

For the evolution to last without human intervention, the artificial system harvests resin from the trees to measure time passing. The hourglass is designed to a volume of two hundred years, as the resin passes from the tree the clock slowly fills. Ultimately the hourglass volume is filled, jamming the clock signally the completion of the system. The project demonstrates by creating this architecture within the trees the artificial system itself extends new possibilities into the relationship between technology and nature.

Tree evolution: As the forest matures the ‘Amber clock’ is consumed with the body of the trees. It acts as an artifact for the artificial system of manipulation.

Hull section: As the trees grow the manipulation of the hull section evolves as a trained section inside the tree.

Amber Clock (left): Ships Figurehead (right): This the carved ornamental and painted figure erected on the bow of ships. In this system it evolves from the splitting of the tree as an iconographic piece of a symbiotic relationship between nature and technology.

Kerrigan’s vision of a ship self-assembling through carefully restricted tree growth really captures the imagination.

Here is another project with similar (Ahem) roots…

Growth Assembly…

Growth Assembly – Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & Sascha Pohflepp from Sascha Pohflepp on Vimeo.

This project by artist Sascha Pohflepp examines a similar idea to Kerrigan’s, but it includes the added caveat of gene-splicing…proposing that genetically “modified” plants could sprout machine-parts instead of conventional fruit and nuts to act as components to build “things”, like the featured herbicide sprayer.

Finally:

lets get through the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ together, we can do this.

So go grab your favorite libation, put your feet up, take a few deep breaths…here is part one:

The poem may have been inspired by James Cook’s second voyage of exploration (1772–1775) of the South Seas and the Pacific Ocean.  It is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98.

The poem is a tale of man’s relationship to mortality.



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