Front Garden

“The Funeral Pyre”

ESPatch Jan 30, 2017 4 comments

DIE…DIE…DIE!

But it looks okay, you may say.

Behind this particularly flattering image of this vitex tree in my front garden lies years of hacking, snipping, swearing and regrowing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like vitex, it is a great pollinator magnet when in bloom, and I don’t think it should be on the invasive list here in Central Texas, but this one got off to a bad start and then just kept getting badder.

Pruning the branches to stop it grating on the roof of my house for the last decade only encouraged more to grow.

I had had enough.

“You hear that Mr. Vitex Tree?… That is the sound of inevitability… It is the sound of your death… Goodbye, Mr. Vitex Tree…”

Of course we all know what Neo did next.

I was determined this tree was not going to spring back up,

so I built a rather large fire on top of the remaining stump.

Everything was going well until I threw on some old lattice pieces I had lying around. I can only think this was coated in the most flammable liquid know to man. It went up with such an intensity that it singed some nearby loquats and attracted the attention of the local authorities as black plumes smoke bellowed to a ridiculous height.

“Everything okay over there sir?”

“Y,Yes officer…just burning my vitex tree,” – I realized that was too much information as it was being spoken and what was with the guilty shoulder shrug?

zzzz the tree in Poltergeist 11405338_gal

Even in death this tree was causing me anxiety.

After the fire had gone out I put a small tarp down where the root-ball had been, shimmied a dump truck into my front garden and poured 14 yards of decomposed granite over it…

lets see you come back from that!

While I was in this ‘lets just take it out’ mood, I also decided to erase this raised brick bed and the small flagstone that has also annoyed me for about as long as the Vitex.

The brickwork did not match anything, the rosemary was long in the tooth and don’t get me started on the Bermuda grass that has become increasingly pervasive in this bed, growing up through the center of the rosemary. Urgh.

It all had to go, dirt, roots and all.

With the Vitex, berms and brick planter removed everything felt quieter and the space sooo much larger.

I have no definitive plans for this area as yet but I suspect some very large flagstone and some ‘quieter’ planting arrangements are not too far away.

Another project in progress is happening at the back of my property.

Like the front, things needed tamed and reworked but it was the demise of my stock-tank pond that really set things in motion.

I have had this stock-tank for about as long as I have been writing this blog, it has served me well and given my kids a lot of fun growing up.

I knew it was reaching the end of its life as the sludge crept higher and the water got shallower.

How high’s the water, mama?
Two feet less and shrinkin’

I could have cleaned some of the sludge out but some bright-spark thought it would be a good idea to sink a bog cypress tree into the tank all those years ago. It did not take the cypress long before it bust free of its terracotta confines, its roots crawling all the way around the bottom of the tank forming a dense mat.

Think Asiatic jasmine on pond-sludge-steroids. http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2011/11/little-monsters/

A few weeks back I noticed the rust on the inside of the tank was also getting worse, I turned a blind eye.

Then overnight the inevitable happened.

It wasn’t a pretty sight…

…and it stank of dead goldfish – a scent that immediately took me back to: http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2012/04/exploding-goldfish/

All together it was not the sort of focal / destination point or ‘lack of’ water feature you want in your back garden…ever.

The cypress was a beast to get out,

but out it came.

As did the stock-tank.

Much to the horror of the cactus man who watched with rather too much intensity for my liking as it rolled by him.

He hates change.

I also had to deal with the remnants of this failed waterfall: http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2008/05/i-used-a-sledge-hammer-on-my-water-feature/

that was all concreted in and sitting on top of some nasty thick plastic.

Oh yes it all had to go.

I won’t go into the unmentionables that were lying in wait underneath this plastic, but they were numerous.

{Subtle knee murmur}

The established loquat on top of the mound was dug out and transplanted to the fence line, which is about to get replaced.

Here is the back area purged awaiting a top dressing of granite and a future spring privacy planting.

A relocated and expanded fire pit and grill going into the space.

More on these spaces as they take shape.

Stay Tuned For:

“The Magic Carpet“

All material © 2017 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

“Seeds & Weeds”

ESPatch Apr 11, 2016 0 comments

Aw come on!

I think I can safely say I have had a few stray seeds blow in to this area of late…one has been especially prolific this year:

Wild carrots!

What I did not know until writing this post was that wild carrots

Daucus carota

are actually baby Queen Anne’s Lace plants, and the carrot / taproot is completely edible.

A word of warning though, Queen Anne’s Lace has a rather lethal doppelganger…poison hemlock, which if mistakenly ingested causes this to happen:

followed by immediate death.

How do you tell them apart?

Poison Hemlock

Conium maculatum

has purple or black spots on a smooth stem whereas Queen Anne’s Lace has a hairy, completely green stem.

In ancient Greece, hemlock was used to poison condemned prisoners.

He drank the contents as though it were a draught of wine.

The most famous victim of hemlock poisoning is the philosopher Socrates. After being condemned to death for impiety and corrupting the young men of Athens, in 399 BC, Socrates was given a potent infusion of the hemlock plant.

This account is only slightly disturbing! :

Coles’ Art of Simpling: ‘If Asses chance to feed much upon Hemlock, they will fall so fast asleep that they will seeme to be dead, in so much that some thinking them to be dead indeed have flayed off their skins, yet after the Hemlock had done operating they have stirred and wakened out of their sleep, to the griefe and amazement of the owners.’

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Talking of feeding upon things,

when the loquats fruit like they have this year, it is a sweet bounty for all manner of creatures.

Squirrels, birds, insects…

we even jumped into the fray with a time consuming loquat cobbler.

“Cobbler?”

This NERIUM oleander ‘Hardy Red’ has been blooming for weeks now.

It has grown so large with the rains that it is receiving a regular pruning to keep it from totally obscuring the sidewalk. I recently witnessed a pedestrian performing a sideways limbo to get past it from my living room window.

Right in front of the oleander I noticed this opportunist growing out of a crack in the concrete.

Staying in the front of the Patch,

bamboo muhly and soft leaf yucca make great companions.

Later in the day our front door burst open with a force that brought back odd memories, http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/09/dude-wheres-my-car/

“Dad, Dad quick, you need to see this!

Swinging around the front of the house he pointed skyward.

A very large Great horned owl complete with glowing orange eyes and a storybook hoot.

I managed to get a couple of shaky shots in before a panicking pair of mocking birds, no doubt with a nest close by, started screaming and dive bombing the owl. It slowly turned and with a few beats of its wings it was gone.

Talking of wings.

I assume this Giant Leopard Moth (with not so giant wings) is in the process of metamorphosis?

Finally:

I will leave with a recent design and installation I have completed.

This one had a significant slope to deal with and overall it felt a little claustrophobic due to narrow pathways and funneling gates. There were also some significant clumps of Nandina that were first on my list for termination,

followed quickly by the existing fence.

The front lacked order and getting from the front door to the side door needed definition.

Here are a couple of visuals I used to communicate the broad strokes of the design:

A ga-ga pit was introduced by the client becoming a main feature of the scheme.

Ga-ga is believed to have been brought to the United States by Israeli counselors working at Jewish summer camps. It was played as early as the mid-1960s. Children often learn about ga-ga through summer camps across Canada and the United States, with varying sizes and shapes of pits…let the work commence!

Determining position and scale…framing begins and area is prepped.

The final pit surrounded by Oklahoma flagstone and varying sizes of river rock.

The front steps were taken out and replaced with a wider solution.

Where the red chairs are I introduced a small gallery deck for the ga-ga pit – visually tying the two structures together and expanding the front porch.

On the right side the driveway was widened and a new limestone dry-stack retaining wall constructed.

Stay Tuned For:

“The Mona Leveridge”

Mona_Leveridge All material © 2016 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

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