Cypress trees

“Notre Dame it’s got Cold”

ESPatch Oct 7, 2012 4 comments

One final fling around the water park before the cooler temperatures descend over central Texas.

A water park that comes to life with an amazing light show as the sun goes down.

There are also lots of plants providing great fall color in the Patch,

they may be leggy (pruning negligence on my part) but these Mexican Leucantha still pack a snaking purple punch.

Salvia and the first celosia seed heads are starting to form,

these will be turning little fingers pink when I bribe my halflings with some extra allowance to harvest the seeds.

Thryalis is also putting on a fine performance at the back of my post oak,

head high, they are attracting shiny tiny hover flies / flower flies.

Allograpta obliqua

Flower Flies resemble wasps and bees. Despite their tribal markings, they are totally harmless and beneficial pollinators of flowers.

The larvae are also partial to aphids.

There are a lot of yellow flowers currently in bloom, it has been a bumper year for bitterweed all over Austin this year. Bitterweed is a yellow-flowered annual weed that thrives in poor soil and turban defying Hell-strip temperatures. Bitterweed poisoning is a major problem for sheep in the Southwest, it is a member of the sunflower family and is closely related to Colorado rubberweed both in appearance and in the rather nasty effects it can have on sheep if ingested.

Luckily for me, I do not have any sheep in my Hell strip, an occasional lost chicken perhaps, but no sheep. I like the free-form meadow aesthetic this cheerful plant creates and it works well set against a backdrop of bamboo muhly, another Hell-strip veteran.

“The bells, the bells…Esperanza.”

One more that is in the process of turning yellow:

Satsuma. The fruit this year are particularly large. I wonder if this little tree will beat the previous fruiting record of 97 set in 2009?

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/11/the-leaf-the-witch-and-the-waterfeature/

There may well be a blogging competition in here; guess (or be the closest) to the exact number of satsumas? And no, the winner will not inherit our house elf.

Other things observed this week:

Bluebonnets are on the rise,

and the mysterious “brains” have been spotted, floating once again in the pond.

“ackack-ackack“

Interestingly these have not yet “grown” the disturbing spinal column that I usually see dangling on the underside of them.

This just in…

Remember this?

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/07/%E2%80%9Cgarden-coffins%E2%80%9D/

Well at the persistent and repetitious “aww can we go to that new place, you know the one where the other one was, can we?” monthly monologue from my elder halfling, we finally broke down and took her to the newly reopened restaurant. I say this somewhat lightheartedly as I really had my own hidden agenda for going there, and it wasn’t the food.

I wanted to see for myself if new ownership had decided to tackle the now infamous, sarcophagus restaurant planter.

And to my amazement they had!

I got out of our vehicle, heart pounding, and rounded the familiar strip-mall corner (mild panic attack) only to come face to face with a healthy and centrally planted loquat…a loquat! Squeals ensued followed by a considerable amount of shushing and hand waving on my part in case the front of house was listening to us just inside the establishment doors.

A pleasant end to a rather long, drawn out story I thought to myself, then I remembered the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and started craving shellfish.

Finally:

I will leave you with some before and after visualizations of the latest ESP design:

A silver and gold approach eats into the hell-strip, widening and softening the property entryway. Two ‘blue ice’ cypress sentries stand guard flanking the gate.

The small box store pond was not at all fitting with the scale of the grounds, it was also situated opposite the front door, a natural entry-place to the garden. I replaced this with a wide and inviting limestone edged pathway that draws the eye down into a seating area and up around the second tier planting beds.

Here is the left side of the same bed with a meandering pathway leading up to a second tier shade bed.

Here is something to sleep-on courtesy of my friend Bob over at: http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/

Sweet dreams.

Brrr…and a bit more Brrr!

Stay Tuned for:

“Fantastic Mr Phlox”

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

“Mind Your Dual Language!”

ESPatch Sep 2, 2012 4 comments

Finally School is back in session.

My wife and I had made it through another summer with only a few permanent psychological scars,

and a couple of new minor facial twitches.

One of which I involuntarily tried out as my cranium passed dangerously close to this rather large colony of harvestmen.

Left is a crane fly (and no it is not a giant mosquito and no, they do not consume mosquitoes); center is a house spider and right is our main-man, the harvestman. All of these insects are commonly and confusingly referred to as “Daddy Long Legs”.

The true daddy long legs here is the harvestman which is an arachnid, but not a spider, and now my head is hurting.

Another new insect for me this week is this:

White-striped Longtail Skipper Butterfly

Chioides catillus

“Your suffering will be legendary for this ESP.”

These common and wild (pinhead) Buttonbushes

Cephalanthus occidentalis

are magnets for a host of insects, particularly skippers, sphinxes and butterflies.

Moving Along:

Everything looks good against the softening backdrop of the hardy bamboo muhly grass.

Muhlenbergia dumosa

Like this crowd of tiny stone crop looking very ethereal in the late afternoon light.

Or perhaps it is a marauding army of tiny skeletons? Ahhh…

I digress.

These yellow bitterweeds are creating a nice splash of color among the muhly in my hell strip,

as are purple fountain grasses that are starting to prime.

It is the time of the psychedelic beautyberry,

Callicarpa americana

a time to get into shape for the winter?

“Give me five more irritating rodent!”

Other eventful events this week:

The crowning of Princess Salvia,

and the ripening of some red-hot tom-tom drums, (the Naboo percussion instrument of choice).

There was an event equally as hot this week…

The 22nd annual Austin hot-sauce festival. This is where Texans eat some of the hottest hot sauce imaginable in some of the hottest temperatures imaginable, oh and was it hot this year.

One step outside of the above breezy structure after dipping a tortilla chip into some “Ass-Burn” hot sauce and trust me, you were…

I really do need to stop embedding this image.

The hot-sauce winners this year: http://www.austinchronicle.com/Market/HotSauce/

Ever wondered what happens to a stock tank full of King Tut papyrus if it is allowed to dry up and bake for a day in a large tin, under the Texas sun?

Not a pretty sight.

Some of these will recover when I soak the roots but a lot of these will need to be clipped back to the base.

Duranta erecta ‘Sapphire Showers’ (Picotee Sky Flower)

A die-back perennial here in central Texas, this shrub blooms sporadically all summer, give it plenty of room though, it is a sprawler. Supposedly it requires full sun, but this one performs admirably under the heavy shade canopy of my post oak.

Inspirational Images of the Week:

Yes folks it is another tiny cabin in the forest, what is my obsession with these structures?

Stay Tuned for:

“Distracting Vampires”

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