“I Sand Corrected”

ESPatch Apr 15, 2012 6 comments

Remember this…

What I thought was a living sand dollar, actually turned out to be a….

a sea biscuit!

An ocean sea biscuit that is.

I realized my mistake when I was perusing these shells in a knick-knack / antiques shop in Apalachicola, on my way home from Florida.

Clipiaster Riticulatus

Sea biscuits are puffy on top and concave underneath whereas sand dollars tend to be smaller and flatter.

I need to back up a little.

My time in Florida had come to an end.

I met up with my family at Ft Lauderdale airport…“Oh don’t you even think about hopping on that carrousel!”

We had a couple of days of recreation in front of us before embarking on the drive back to Texas.

We decided to visit the Miami Seaquarium where the original Flipper show was filmed.

“Flipper?”

Imaginations ran wild observing the dolphins roaming around in their aquarium.

Eyes grew even wider when the star of the show Lolita, an even larger dolphin (Orcinus orca) started soaking the crowd. Lolita was captured in 1970 from the Puget Sound waters and has been performing at the Miami Seaqurium for more than 40 years.

I know they are well looked after, and that some of these creatures are held in captivity because of unfortunate circumstances, but still I struggle with the performing aspect and their confines. In the wild these creatures travel 100 miles in a day.

“NOO!”

It was a true Levwold experience.

One final trip to the beach,

for a snorkel,

a sandcastle, and another

sea-shell hunt.

The hunt was somewhat abbreviated after discovering this rather disturbing creature burrowing into the sand… Brrr.

This roachy-crabby-rollypoly creature is commonly called a sand flea, they are otherwise known as mole crabs.

Emerita talpoidea

They are very common and apparently make for great fishing bait.

“Mine, mine, mine, mine”.

After an equally abbreviated sleep, (it was a 3.am rise), we hit the toll-road doing 95, “let them truckers roll, 10.4” and kept up the pace for a good three hours, “making time” through a good portion of Florida…

…luckily with zero violations.

12 Harry Potters and five states later:

By now my enthusiasm for the journey had certainly waned.

I had strangely detached myself from the pain in my legs and backside, gone through the mental anguish of a hundred and five “are we there yets” and emerged on the other side of sanity with bloodshot eyes and a permanent grin / grimaced expression that even I found odd every time I would catch it looking back at me in my rear-view mirror.

We had finally made it home.

Back in the Patch:

This was my first time back to the Patch in over a month, and oh how things had changed.

In my now bloodshot minds-eye I had pictured the garden still in drought conditions, bare, anemic plants hanging on for dear life (as I am sure they will be again soon enough) but no, things looked, well, surprisingly healthy!

Some things a little too healthy:

Like these baby feather grasses and chickweed. It is a good job I have a couple of hundred small pots on hand, I think I am going to need them.

I had missed the poppies,

but there was still plenty of color to greet me in the front of the Patch.

This red passion flower,

Passiflora coccinea

.

virtually disappeared last year, it was good to see it once again, even if it is treatening to take over my entire front porch. The petals on the flower are bent backwards to allow hummingbirds easy access.

larkspur were in full swing, dancing around this sotol with their purple blue and purple white blooms.

But best of all…

were the feather grasses that were now in their prime.

I thought that during my absence, weeds would have run amok, but I was pleasantly surprised, apart from the feather grasses and front chickweed everything was ship-shape.

The two palm grasses that I had planted last year have grown significantly:

I like this plant a lot, and losing both of my mature plants a couple of years back, I had to give them another go. You cannot beat them for an exotic, tropical look in Central Texas and they work great paired with the contrasting leaves of Japanese aralia and thyralis for a splash of shady yellow color. Palm grasses also grow surprisingly fast, second year growth (like this one) can easily reach a 6ft spread.

I also returned home to fruit-ladened loquat trees.

We picked,

we gathered,

and spent some significant zen-time preparing.

It took us long enough to shrivel and stain fingers, and based on these sticky seeds, it looks like I will have lots and lots of small loquat trees in my future. The fruit made great margaritas, thanks Cheryl over there at the Conscious Gardening

Finally:

I do not recall my artemesia looking so healthy,

and this Persian ivy requires some immediate training.

Home sweet home.

Stay Tuned for:

“Exploding Goldfish!”

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

Bewilderment by Benson Kua

“Igniting the Cattails”

ESPatch Jan 15, 2012 9 comments

It is that time again…

…the time of cattails,

Typha latifolia

a little later than usual,

but the furry corn dogs are finally ready, and so were my halflings.

Cattail spells were cast on long wands, sending fluff floating high into the sky,

only to rain down into eyes,

and onto the end of long Anubis noses.

Next years crop of cattail wands is going to be a lot larger as I have now introduced another bog tank dedicated to this versatile marginal plant.

While all this activity was going on I decided to ignite a corn dog myself (as you do) to see just how good of a tinder these plants actually make.

This time I made sure I was not in close proximity to any of my ornamental grasses.

Moving along:

I checked on the two tiny plumosa ferns that I planted against my gate a few weeks back.

One has wasted no time climbing up the iron frame. These two plants will eventually cover and soften this arched gate,

like the entrance to a Hobbiton domicile…

well, that is the goal at least.

This plumosa in another part of the Patch has been strangling this Tikki torch for quite some time. I decided to unravel it,

then re-ravel it onto a more permanent structure.

My rosemary bushes are in full form at the moment, most of them are blooming or just about to.

Can you have too many?…

I know I have, and they are huge, great for an entryway.

Winter foliage color provided by a purple leaf sand cherry,

Prunus x cistena

and my ever-spreading desert trumpet vine, also known as Port St.John’s Creeper or Port St.John’s-klimop.

This vine looks great when most things don’t.

Just as she was making a new friend the hatchling’s rather large mother returned…

Hand sanitizer!

Finally:

Getting smoother now…

I am proud to announce that we have now entered the 3rd stage (pre-polishing) rock tumbling phase (snort), this phase apparently lasts between 7 and 10 days,

A little more enthusiasm is in order here Hermione?

Stay Tuned for:

“You Can’t Handle the Tooth”

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