“Counting Sheep”

ESPatch Oct 2, 2011 13 comments

agave parryi truncata

Still no rain, lots of dust, and a summer cold for me…there, moaning all done for this week’s post.

This sad little gulf coast toad looks exactly how I feel at this point in the drought, I gave him a good dowsing with the watering can and quickly got him into some shade. I have been noticing quite a few dead toads around lately. I think the damp shady places that they rely on during the day have, like everything else,

turned to dust under the death rays.

WARNING…WARNING…

…never attempt to extract giant timber bamboo unless under the supervision of an adult.

I have been putting this task off since last winter when this huge giant timber bamboo got hammered by our hard freezes. Although it was pushing up new culms I was not prepared to go through this mess again. No, there was only one thing for it.

This monster almost got the better of me, and I am very determined when it comes to extracting plants that need to be extracted.

It was the most stubborn root-ball I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. I started to work around it with my heaviest pointed shovel but I could get no movement out of it at all, it was like concrete, it was horrible. As the pace and the sweat quickened, the cut culms began to look more and more like octopus suckers, clinging to the soil…pick axe, rockbar, pick axe, shovel and then naturally…

Snap! The force and speed of this breakage had me pirouetting out over the cut culms, which in-turn had me stumbling uncontrollably (zombie-like) into the adjacent hoja santa plants which were already quite unhappy.

Shovel #2.

Half an our later and lots of other creaking from shovel #2 and I finally heard some popping, music to my ears…I had beached the whale.

Just what I need, another bare patch in the patch.

Moving along:

Texas sage is once again offering up more false promises or rain.

and the inland sea oats are now in full fall color.

Celosia is pretty scarce in the Patch this year, most of it just wilted away like greens in a warm salad, this stand is my final hope for seeds this fall. These plants have been receiving supplemental water from my neighbor who is working to keep his struggling post oak alive.

I did notice a big change in the light quality this week, I think the summer (if not the drought) is finally fading behind us…and good riddance.

Here are a couple of gross things to ponder…

relax, this one does not seek shelter in houses. This is a female

Arenivaga

(arena meaning sand and vagus meaning wandering)

It is a genus of sand cockroaches, what a primordial looking creature…brrr.

And this next one was taken on an iPhone by my wife:

Scutigera coleoptrata

or a house centipede.

They are secretive,very odd looking and move with strange darting motions, and because of this homeowners typically fear the house centipede. Should you come across this very shy creature you might very well be inclined to immediately take your slipper to it, but these are actually beneficial in your home since they rid you of other pests like spiders,bedbugs,termites,cockroaches silverfish,firebrats,carpet beetle larvae ants and other household arthropods.

I found this pest lurking under the bed,

Kuminus Fangstratus

a vicious nocturnal creature.

Finally:

Apart from the Texas Sages, oleander and my mist flowers are about the only thing that are both blooming and still looking good, talk about plants that can weather the storm (or in this case the lack of it).

These Poecilognathus – a kind of bee fly (Diptera: Bombyliidae) covered the pale blue blooms. (Thanks for the ID meredee)

As there is not much to do in the garden but wait, (and cut down dead bamboo). I decided this week to give my own pathways a quick replenishment of the golden soil.

I do this every few years as the granite degrades and packs down.

After a hard day’s work there is nothing better than playing the smurfs next to her now sleepy Kuminus Fangstratus.

Inspirational image of the week:

Car Part Sculptor by James Corbett.

James Corbett is a renowned eco friendly artist and is known to create awesome sculpture from waste auto parts.

http://www.jamescorbettart.com/default.html

Stay Tuned for:

“French Fork”

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

“My Agave is Knocking on Deaths Door”

ESPatch May 30, 2008 0 comments

Here is the poor wizened chap – the 20ft flower stalk is still upright but has finished blooming (you can see the debris from the flowers building up). The Agave is dying from the leaf tips inward. I am going to follow and post pictures of the gradual decay of this plant.

Here is the bean stalk – all the flowers have died now. A detail of the trunk reveals hundreds of baby plants.

. . . .and now for some running Bamboo in Stock Tanks :

Here is my latest stock tank addition (4ftx2ft), this one contains a black bamboo (Phyllostachy Nigra) – the black culms against the neighboring fuchsia Oleander will provide good color contrast. The broad-leaf loquat will act as a backdrop for the fine leaves of the bamboo to complete the trio. All these plants are young, I will revisit next year to see if the scene develops like I hope it will. I am also planning to plant in front of the tank to soften its base, perhaps Cast Iron plant?

This plant has been in numerous containers over the last few years, all too small, and as such the plant has struggled. Even though the bamboo is 4 years old it is quite stunted and the culms are very small. I am hoping that this “pot” will be large enough to finally give it a kick-start. I have had success with this container planting method with a Golden Bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea) in the front of my house so I thought I would repeat it.

Here is a Golden Bamboo 3 weeks after transplanting and lots of new culms.

As a side note, although this container is on the large side (especially in the cooler states) I believe it’s size to be the “sweet-spot” for a Texas bamboo container if you have the space. Small containers in Texas are as much use as the toilet they installed on the international space station.

Other extroverts in the garden right now:

Amaranthus, collectively known as amaranth or pig-weed running amok in my front yard – will put on a
good show in the fall. The word comes from the Greek amarantos “one that does not wither,” or the never-fading (flower).

The national flower of Barbados is the Pride of Barbados
(Dwarf Poinciana or Flower Fence). Great tropical leaves!

Sticking on the Barbados theme – Barbados cherry is native to the Lesser Antilles from St. Croix to Trinidad, also Curacao and Margarita and neighboring northern South America as far south as Brazil. Mine is one of the smaller varieties and it is packed with cherries right now. When it was flowering it was hard to even walk past this plant for the large numbers of bees that would swarm. I think my neighbors must have thought it strange that I repeatedly had a flailing spasm exactly in the same place down my pathway, every-time I would walk past it.

Stay Tuned for:

“The Bermuda Triangle”

All material © 2009 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

Celosia