Datura

“Raining Beetles”

ESPatch Sep 9, 2010 15 comments

This week in the Patch has been alive with the rather flatulent sounding flying antics of these large bumbling beetles. Loads of them. The short journey to my garden shed has had me ducking, hopping, and occasionally screaming like a young girl as these beasts of burden try to desperately control their flight paths, occasionally dive bombing me like blundering wildebeests on the wing. When navigational and flying skills were handed out, these Figeater beetles (also known as the green fruit beetle or fig beetle)…

Cotinis mutabilis

…apparently missed the entire meeting, they probably just got “turned around” and then distracted by a fig or peach tree on the way. I witnessed one hit into my back porch with such velocity, I swear I could hear the wind get knocked out of it…it audibly wheezed, gathered itself, before going on it’s random way in a kind of stunned, sideways flying fashion…“I’m alright, I’m alright…meant to do that…doing okay now.”

They have turned up this week in plague-like proportions. Figeater beetles are oftenconfused with the green June beetle ,their appearance is quite similar, but the green June beetle is smaller and as the name suggests they are generally witnessed earlier on in the year. To make identification even harder, the only possible geographical crossover of both species occurs right here in the state of Texas. It is a member of the scarab beetle family.

I rather like these blundering iridescent beetles, as do my kids who have been running around catching them in their butterfly net…and those legs and front pincer feet (top image, brr) are as formidable looking as this science fiction splitting datura seed pod…

I have a tray strategically situated under this “ready to hurl” spiny seed pod. What an amazing sight, there must be hundreds of seeds here ready to go “Blah” on my decomposed granite pathway. It is ridiculous that I now consult my wife…“do you think I have the tray positioned in the right place?’ We both look at the seed pod from various angles and position the tray accordingly…“left a bit, yes, right there”… until we agree. I have already planted out a lot of these seeds in my hellstrip.

It is like we are playing one of those skill cranes at Dave and Busters!

“Aye, look at her, she is about tae have a core dump ESP, she’s gonna blow!”

“Ach, ah canna’ believe yer using Scotty’s fake Scottish accent and vulgarities, instead of mine now ESP!”

Poor William.

With the forecast of bad weather on the horizon I thought I should go ahead and get some plants in the ground for one of my clients. I pulled into a nursery, got a bunch of plants and as I approached my trusted steed to load up, I noticed that something was not as it should be…

I have no idea how or when this hole in my window appeared…as if my pick up wasn’t red-neck enough already. It now looks completely ridiculous with dwarf miscanthus grasses poking out the side and a huge Buddah’s belly protruding five feet beyond my tailgate (asomewhat disheveled turban naturally completing the scene). What made the situation even worse was that every time I went over a bump…well exactly.

So how do I try to start to summarizewhat has happened this past week in central Texas? We went from scorching dry conditions…

…to hurricane Hermine, and Hermine was not going to be satisfied until she had packed a punch with lots and lots and lots of rain. Oh, and did she deliver!

Some areas around Austin ended up at around the 8″ mark at the end of a night and day of sustained heavy rains. My pathways turned into running streams. I could hear the spirals of the hurricane hit my metal roof in waves whilst I was lying in my bed grinning like an insane Cheshire cat.

With every wave of rain my grin widened.

The noise of the storm brought with it the sound of tiny scampering feet (non-feline) followed by the inevitable late night, rather poltergeist sounding…

“Mommy it’s here!”

This midnight wandering is always followed by some predictable groaning…“No, no, no…Go back to bed, its late”…shortly before everyone immediately ends up in our bed…(the ESP / Walton’s ‘norm in a storm’ reaction)!

When this happens, my five year old daughter transforms immediately into a rugby union scrum-half, she proceeds to take full-advantage of her luxurious (I’m in my parents bed) position and for no apparent reason proceeds to repeatedly kick me in the kidneys until I am teetering on the edge of my side of the bed, bruised, battered and curled into a submissive fetal position. It does not matter how I react or try to anticipate her abusive nocturnal habits, over (subconscious) time, she always has me in a check mate position (the edge of the bed) by approximately 4am. (A number that is ironically comparable to the strategic chess / body moves it usually takes her to get me there).

She is a Russian Master!…Paige Nosleepnifcofv.

Naturally this is perfect timing on her part to totally ensure that I break all natural biorhythms, ensuring, once again, complete sleep deprivation. The ‘quacking-goose’ I-phone alarm goes off at precisely the moment that I fall back to sleep…6:00am – kindergarten…Ahhh.

Back to the Patch…

This little chap (I believe it is some type of squirrel treefrog) was enjoying all the wet weather in the bottom of this toy bucket.

My Celosia on the other hand had buckled over onto the sidewalk in the soggy conditions. I placed a few large rocks at their bases to support them. I am hoping they will regain their composure as we dry up a little.

The returning and reflected sun hit this gazing ball perfectly, illuminating the underside of the leaves of my Mexican lime tree that has made a pretty decent return after I cut it back to the ground after last winter’s freezes.

This Mexican Petunia immediately responded to having its large underground container filled up with the wet stuff.

I will leave you all to contemplate this rather mysterious scene from my garden…

It looks like a bunch of tiny red light bulbs devouring some paper wasps wings?

Inspirational image of the week:

The balconies of the “Cactus House” apartment building in Rotterdam were designed to maximize outdoor gardening space for tenants. The splaying stack of slabs creates big terraces for gardening and the irregular shape allows sun to enter from multiple angles.

The cactus house reminds me of my pine cone cactus:

I have been meaning to do this for a while…

Stay Tuned for:

“TIMBER!”

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

“Spitting Seeds”

ESPatch Aug 27, 2010 14 comments

I caught this fiendish grin coughing up seeds all over one of my pathways this morning. I quickly got a tray and stuck it underneath the vomiting seedpod, carefully picking up the seeds that had already been deposited on the decomposed granite.

Huey…Ralph!

These rather large datura seedpods start off quite hard and green, then they ripen, soften and eventually split, spewing out an enormous amount of seeds in a very drunk “ten pints of lager and a vindaloo” fashion. Oh yes, in a ripened state they are slimy and quite disgusting…but what great hats.

I picked two or three of these pods smeared them around on my tray and left them to bake in the hot Texas sun. I have never tried to grow datura from seed, but after witnessing one of the finest displays from this plant this year, and the Sphingids it attracted: http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/08/wilson/, I am determined to have a lot more of it.

I know they are poisonous, I know they contain tropane alkaloids, I know I have kids, I know I have them planted next to a mountain laurel that also drops its potentially lethal red beans all around them…What can I say? The Patch is a dangerous place, if the plants don’t get you, the Naboo surely will.

I have hammered into my children from a very young age what they should avoid doing with certain plants in the garden, and they totally get it, this is one they give a very wide birth, well this, and the mountain laurel, and the oleander, angels trumpet and…

From a crazy grin to some rather irritated eyes…

It appears that Cactus man (junior) has developed another slight retinal irritation, just to add to all the drama that he has already had to endure in his resurrected life… http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/10/halloween-2009/

Is it me or is his “small eye” getting smaller? Also, I couldn’t help but notice that he has developed a lot more disturbing lumps on his paddle…(never a good thing).

“You have that right ESP”.

I took my hose and irrigated his eye sockets in an attempt to make him feel a little more comfortable.

On a lighter note:

Coral Vine

Antigonon leptopus

has started to bloom in the Patch this week. These pink blooms are a staple in southeast Asia for bridal bouquets, it is also known as “chain of love”, probably due to heart-shaped leaves and pink flowers that bees cannot resist. I have a love hate relationship with this plant, it can be very invasive if left to its own devices, and it looks like Hell in the winter, so make sure you let it climb in areas where you can get to, to clear out the old growth…and whatever you do, do not let it get anywhere close to some…

…giant timber bamboo, it would like nothing more then to climb up to the top of these culms, it would scale them in seconds!

This is the skinny side of the Patch, lots of utilities and ducts, home to my redneck wind chime. It does not look too bad from this angle but lets pan out a little…

There we go!

On the left side a couple of pink jasmine vines lived happily for some years, but last winter’s freezes sadly took care of them, it is now a complete interwoven mess. I could stand on a step ladder for hours unraveling these strands, but I won’t. I intend to replant at the base with some more vines and let them recover the structure…the gardening equivalent of sweeping the tangled mess under the carpet.

The additional carpet of weeds on the floor are completely out of control. While I was in here, weeding on hands and knees, I disturbed a host of unsavory characters that had made the area their home…

I found a few of these large, very grumpy toads, shortly before I felt something else, something cold and much more sinister, slimming its way around my right wrist. I instinctively flicked my arm in my now traditional conniption fashion which, for some reason, brings my right knee up toward my chin and ends with me looking behind me in a dog like fashion! My spasm sent this unsavory creature slapping onto the side of my house…where it unexpectedly stuck.

What on earth!

“Or perhaps not from Earth ESP, have you considered that”?

I zeroed in on the anomaly with my camera set to macro…it was quite shocking!

In a panic I frantically checked my wrist, half-expecting to see a hole where this alien had burrowed, perhaps leaving a part of itself (Ahhh) inside me to grow, ultimately to consume me from the inside, luckily I found nothing.

This is a land planarian,

Bipalium kewense…

…and it was sufficiently disgusting.

They are grey to brown long flat worms with several dark stripes running down the back. Land planarians thrive in high temperature and humidity, thus they are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical areas. Heads of many land planarians are expanded lunate or tapering to a blunt point. A mouth, which also serves as an anus (shudders), is present near mid-body, these disturbing worms are voracious predators of earthworms, slugs, insect larvae, and like the Naboo (reportedly) are cannibalistic. They are also capable of utilizing their own tissues such as reproductive tissue for food when reserves are exhausted. (repeated swallowing, left knee vibration)

Here is the side alley all cleaned up, well mostly. Now to bide my time before my next granite delivery. An alphonse karr bamboo will be going in, in front of the air conditioning unit to visually hide it from the front of the property.

Now if I can only screen the planarian from my conscious memory, perhaps I will get some sleep tonight?

Stay Tuned for:

“Squeezing Lanterns”

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