Birds

“I Sand Corrected”

ESPatch Apr 15, 2012 6 comments

Remember this…

What I thought was a living sand dollar, actually turned out to be a….

a sea biscuit!

An ocean sea biscuit that is.

I realized my mistake when I was perusing these shells in a knick-knack / antiques shop in Apalachicola, on my way home from Florida.

Clipiaster Riticulatus

Sea biscuits are puffy on top and concave underneath whereas sand dollars tend to be smaller and flatter.

I need to back up a little.

My time in Florida had come to an end.

I met up with my family at Ft Lauderdale airport…“Oh don’t you even think about hopping on that carrousel!”

We had a couple of days of recreation in front of us before embarking on the drive back to Texas.

We decided to visit the Miami Seaquarium where the original Flipper show was filmed.

“Flipper?”

Imaginations ran wild observing the dolphins roaming around in their aquarium.

Eyes grew even wider when the star of the show Lolita, an even larger dolphin (Orcinus orca) started soaking the crowd. Lolita was captured in 1970 from the Puget Sound waters and has been performing at the Miami Seaqurium for more than 40 years.

I know they are well looked after, and that some of these creatures are held in captivity because of unfortunate circumstances, but still I struggle with the performing aspect and their confines. In the wild these creatures travel 100 miles in a day.

“NOO!”

It was a true Levwold experience.

One final trip to the beach,

for a snorkel,

a sandcastle, and another

sea-shell hunt.

The hunt was somewhat abbreviated after discovering this rather disturbing creature burrowing into the sand… Brrr.

This roachy-crabby-rollypoly creature is commonly called a sand flea, they are otherwise known as mole crabs.

Emerita talpoidea

They are very common and apparently make for great fishing bait.

“Mine, mine, mine, mine”.

After an equally abbreviated sleep, (it was a 3.am rise), we hit the toll-road doing 95, “let them truckers roll, 10.4” and kept up the pace for a good three hours, “making time” through a good portion of Florida…

…luckily with zero violations.

12 Harry Potters and five states later:

By now my enthusiasm for the journey had certainly waned.

I had strangely detached myself from the pain in my legs and backside, gone through the mental anguish of a hundred and five “are we there yets” and emerged on the other side of sanity with bloodshot eyes and a permanent grin / grimaced expression that even I found odd every time I would catch it looking back at me in my rear-view mirror.

We had finally made it home.

Back in the Patch:

This was my first time back to the Patch in over a month, and oh how things had changed.

In my now bloodshot minds-eye I had pictured the garden still in drought conditions, bare, anemic plants hanging on for dear life (as I am sure they will be again soon enough) but no, things looked, well, surprisingly healthy!

Some things a little too healthy:

Like these baby feather grasses and chickweed. It is a good job I have a couple of hundred small pots on hand, I think I am going to need them.

I had missed the poppies,

but there was still plenty of color to greet me in the front of the Patch.

This red passion flower,

Passiflora coccinea

.

virtually disappeared last year, it was good to see it once again, even if it is treatening to take over my entire front porch. The petals on the flower are bent backwards to allow hummingbirds easy access.

larkspur were in full swing, dancing around this sotol with their purple blue and purple white blooms.

But best of all…

were the feather grasses that were now in their prime.

I thought that during my absence, weeds would have run amok, but I was pleasantly surprised, apart from the feather grasses and front chickweed everything was ship-shape.

The two palm grasses that I had planted last year have grown significantly:

I like this plant a lot, and losing both of my mature plants a couple of years back, I had to give them another go. You cannot beat them for an exotic, tropical look in Central Texas and they work great paired with the contrasting leaves of Japanese aralia and thyralis for a splash of shady yellow color. Palm grasses also grow surprisingly fast, second year growth (like this one) can easily reach a 6ft spread.

I also returned home to fruit-ladened loquat trees.

We picked,

we gathered,

and spent some significant zen-time preparing.

It took us long enough to shrivel and stain fingers, and based on these sticky seeds, it looks like I will have lots and lots of small loquat trees in my future. The fruit made great margaritas, thanks Cheryl over there at the Conscious Gardening

Finally:

I do not recall my artemesia looking so healthy,

and this Persian ivy requires some immediate training.

Home sweet home.

Stay Tuned for:

“Exploding Goldfish!”

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

Bewilderment by Benson Kua

“Flying Walnuts”

ESPatch Sep 10, 2011 7 comments

Captain Enrique “Squirrel” Monastario has been waging war on the Patch, throwing discarded nut shells on me and my metal roof…I guess the pecans are finally edible. There have been many heated squirrel disputes of late over who has the chomping rights to these two nut-laden trees, sometimes forcing one of them out of the tree and very close to the sharp blades of …

Zorro’s feet, lying in wait at the base of my giant timber bamboo.

I have a rather ill-conceived and ridiculous theory that all the nuts that were buried by the squirrels last fall actually vaporized underground during this summers intense heat, making food for the squirrels very scarce. I have never seen such an intense pecan feeding frenzy:

I sweep this mess up every few days and if it continues,

IF IT CONTINUES…

“Relax amigo, I will will take care of this or my name is not Don Diego”

This is where Zorro takes refuge when his partner Kumo, plays a little too rough.

I have a suspicion that this magnificent Red-shouldered Hawk (thanks for the ID Mikael), who has been showing up recently on the top of some adjacent pecan trees also has his keen eyes on these squabbling squirrels, either that or my goldfish. Here is a rather interestingly disgusting fact…by the time they are five days old, nestling Red-shouldered Hawks can shoot their feces over the edge of their nest, no they really can. Bird poop on the ground is a sign of an active nest.

Hmm, I wonder…

My Weber…my brand new Weber!

“How very dare you”.

” Shhh, snicker, I mean cooo, coo”.

Moving disconcertingly along:

I found this moth on my deck and it looked exactly like an old leaf. You have to get up really close to it before you can see it is actually a

Walnut Sphinx

Amorpha Juglandis

Rather strange that the caterpillars of these amazing creatures make squeaking sounds when disturbed.

Caterpillar Photograph: Seana Saxon

Even though we are once again in triple digits we must be finally entering fall as the grasses are starting to put on their annual display.

Red / purple fountain grass is one of my favorites.

Pampas is also pushing out plumes this week,

and this blooming Texas sage (aka the barometer plant) must surely be confused…a change of weather or temperature in central Texas?

I think not.

Honey bees were going berserk on it.

Talking of bees this baby bee caused a wee bit of drama the other day when my youngest halfling stood on it and got stung.

It took us a while to find it, it was so tiny. Poor little guys.

This week in the Patch…

A replacement stock tank goes in,

and order and leaks are now restored and watertight once again.

This sunflower was pecked to death and stripped of all its seeds in a single day.

I was hoping to save at least a few for next year.

Stay Tuned for:

“The Haunted Garden”

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