Butterflies

“Knotty Dreads”

ESPatch May 8, 2010 8 comments

Now these are some knotty dreads man, all matted and stuck together. The panicles on my Mexican feather grasses had created such a dense matting situation, that it was making their heads fall over.

They looked pretty bad all stuck together like island hair… mmm, what to do, what to do? I picked my first test subject and just like…

I went to work, frantically snipping out all the seed heads with my prosthetic shearing fingers…

…unlike Edward’s reputable pruning results, mine were not so good, not so good at all (left), it just looked really unnatural. As I pondered what else I could do to remedy this situation, I grabbed one of the seed heads and pulled it, it easily came away from the plant….that was it! I went to another grass, grabbed a small chunk and sure enough the seeds and a length of the panicle stalk came away from the plant. This technique ensured that the plant retained a more natural look while getting rid of the matted dreadlock situation… it worked a treat to lighten the entire grass (right).

Here they are back to their former glory once again. I systematically went through all my grasses pulling their hair out. I did get a little greedy on the amount that could be removed in a one extraction a couple of times, resulting in a small clump of the grass coming up out of the ground, oops! No, there was a fine balance to be heeded in this hair-pulling activity. By the time I was about halfway through my grasses I had the technique mastered, gathering the dreadlocks into clumps and working my way around the plant as though it were a scalp, I must have looked insane, especially when I started to lay out a cape (courtesy of my professional hair cutting wife) around each plant to catch any falling hair follicles, errr…I mean seeds!

I shoved these seeds into a large bucket as I went on, and on, and…

A couple of hours later, I had about four of these seed-bales filling up my trash can, there must have been millions of seeds.

Moving on…

Butterflies, moths, all manner of things a’ flutter were feasting this week on copious amounts of the sweet stuff. This one it seems had the whole salty / sweet thing going on. It stayed on my tee shirt for a few minutes (quite salty at this point). I am guessing there was enough moisture on the garment from the feather grass thinning in our 101 degree (with the heat index) temperatures to extract something nourishing out of it? Whatever it was getting from my garment, it was liking it.

More from the bench area…

Ever since I finished my bench the spaces to the left and right of it seemed somewhat lost, floating around in space.

“Roger that Houston, both sides of the bench, but can I say “gimbal lock” one last time?”

I decided to reflect the opposite bed to the bench and continue the same brickwork design to form a couple of small beds to finish these areas off, and to visually anchor the bench.

And the other side.

Must remember to move that first canna away from the dwarf Palmetto, it is getting a little crowded right there! The brickwork really helps to make the bench a focal point and destination.

Are those more feather grasses?

“I have some rather disturbing news”…

The Cactus Man has apparently returned from the grave…he is re-animating!

“He is an opuntia ESP”?

I could not believe this when I saw it today. It appears the deceased Cactus Man is attempting to re-create his face and re-animate himself on a new cactus paddle that has grown in exactly the same spot from the same plant where I originally killed him and his family. Now what are the chances of that?

“About 4504 to the power of 10 ESP, now… can’t you see I am busy engaging the Borg?”

Data!

This was one tiny spider. I shot this blind with the camera. I was amazed what shapes and translucent coloration the camera caught.

Sedum potosinum in decline, turning a rust color at the end of it’s bloom cycle.

Vines are on the move…

…pond-life is feeling good…

…and the pole-beans are on the rise.

Captains Log supplemental: Check out my new “ESP Design Services” at the top of my blog, and I hope you like the new sidebar.

ESP.

Stay Tuned for:

“Emergance”

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

“Bread Rock”

ESPatch Apr 1, 2010 18 comments

Gross Post Alert!…Gross Post Alert!

The stench inside this cavern I cannot put into words, for fear of involuntary retching over my laptop keyboard once again just remembering it (mops side of mouth with Kleenex). It really was the most diabolical combination of fermented sweet and sour, and I am not talking about a kimchee – esque aroma, (which I love) oh no! Let me try and explain it, just to get you in the appropriate gag arena: Imagine a sickly sweet pumpkin pudding aroma, combined simply with fizzing rotten chicken (description courtesy of my oldest hobbit, minus the fizzing), it also had the texture of moist bread! (Burp… starts to look around worried).

This nasty cavern, (caverns being a popular post-topic recently in the Patch), was created as I started to examine this thing of immaculate beauty…

My largest

Colocasia

or giant elephant ear. Granted it is looking more like the painful stump of an elephant’s foot right now, but not for long, not for long at all!

I have left this tuber in the ground for the past four years, no problem, but this year’s prolonged cold winter temperatures had apparently taken their squishy toll. I prodded it, my hobbits prodded it, it started to ooze flesh, this could not be good. Then we all prodded it some more. Remember the infamous scene in poltergeist when the paranormal investigator started to touch his face, then proceeded to dig in his fingers and pull off his face?

Well that’s how we got started with this Taro…A prod led to a poke that led to a gouge that…

led to a push…

That led to the Taro finally “giving way” in a scene reminiscent of the horrible resuscitation scene from “The Thing”.

I think we all remember what disgusting “thing” happens next! I digress. When the head of the taro rolled back everyone recoiled and “ewwed” simultaneously, turning our faces away from the smell that hit us like a tsunami of flatulence. A stink horn is a terrible thing (right G?) http://thegerminatrix.com/?p=637 but this rank atrocity came pretty close as far as tickling ones stomach release valve.

“It’s just a rotten Taro ESP, nothing to be scared about”.

If you say so scary Kane! Brrrr

A couple of hours after the decapitation, I reluctantly revisited the carnage and found these tiny iridescent

Dolichopus

flies having a great time, their wings flicking back and forth in sick excitement.

These tiny, tiny flies are really interesting visually, looking like molten metal, their segmented bodies are really quite amazing. This one is about to make a left turn apparently.

Enough nastiness…

What!

Okay I promise that is it on the gross front…

Today was the day to move a rather large rock, a rock that has stayed where it fell from a truck that delivered a large delivery of decomposed granite some time ago.

The rock was wiggled and pried, rotated and shuffled down the slope until it came to rest and leveled in a more appropriate location…Thanks Bob at Draco! http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/ (and “PP” for the pry-bar and strategic leveling).

…right in front of my beautiful gas meter. While I was messing around in this part of the Patch I decided to relocate a plant or twelve, the agave and agave parryi var. truncata all coming from this container:

None of these plants were doing particularly well, buried in the shade of the vines that are slowly coming back into the land of the living.

This area took a real beating when the hole where the Tahoe hit http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/09/dude-wheres-my-car/ was being repaired, it received a lot of foot traffic and compaction as the house was repaired and repainted. Here it is the area planted up, the bed also has Mexican bush sage pushing through that will soften the scene and provide good contrast with the agave’s as they mature. The two silver Agave , known as Parry’s agave or mescal agave, are slow-growing agave’s native to Mexico (Sonora), hopefully these will reach their full potential in their new, more sun-loving home.

An old ceder carcass is added for a “Waltons” moment.

Now to wait for the scene to fill-in. There is also a line of tiny transplanted feather grasses in front of the moss boulders, well it wouldn’t be the Patch without them after all!

While all this transplanting and rock shuffling was going on, my Hobbits were being way..way too quite…

They had found my last trowel, (my favorite trowel has been missing for the last couple of weeks), I surmise that somehow it has found it’s way to “Davy Jones’ Locker“ at the bottom of my stock tank fish-pond. Mmm…Now I wonder who would do such a thing?

Apparently the hole was to house a pill bug and this snail, a few leaves were thrown in then the hole back filled.

The raggedy pram makes it into yet another shot. After the hole was filled in, my oldest hobbit went to the back garden to check on her new container garden that she has taken over as manager…

…and things seem to be growing very well. This is all hers!

Moving on…

Snail, cactus and verbena…

Here is the same purple verbena in full flight…

attracting once again the zombie / Thestral eyes of this swallowtail butterfly.

“I see the swallowtail too Harry”

Looking like a glittering harlequin’s hat, the blooms on this ghost plant are really quite involved… when you get up close.

This paper wasp is looking pretty sharp, color coordinated on the blooms of this gopher plant…

and my Mexican lime lives, it lives I tell you! This is the first bit of green it has developed at the base of the trunk. I knew she would pull through!

Tiny seed pods are now replacing the fading blooms of the mountain laurels.

The ESP is jumping further out of winter everyday, the survival of my Mexican lime tree and my Barbados cherry has made my week, even both of my dwarf bottle-brushes are steaming back to life. Although spring usually lasts a matter of hours in Central Texas, I plan to make the most of it…an iced turban will be in my future soon enough after all!

That little sotol in the middle of my circular bed is finally starting to develop a presence!

And finally:

I told you I was not finished with these four “nervous” daisies quite yet.

Inspirational Images of the week:

Anybody visiting Zilker Gardens in Austin last weekend for the plant festival, probably noticed this crazy Texas red bud specimen…

MacCrimmon’s Lament [Song]…Mac Umber