pride of barbados

“Shaken not Stirred”

ESPatch Jun 21, 2010 14 comments

Lots of new blooms in the heated Patch this week. As you can see, my front yard vitex agnus-castus tree has almost finished blooming and is setting a ton of seeds, so many seeds infact, that it is weighing the tree down to the ground. It is always something with a vitex!

You would think that with all these seeds, I would have little vitex trees popping up everywhere, but I really don’t…

Well, maybe just a few.

The low hanging branches now require us to perform a considerable amount of stooping and absurd limbo maneuvers to get to our front door.

I put up with the nonsense and neurotic tendencies from this small tree / large shrub for one reason…pollinators, and swallowtails…they go crazy on it!

Staying at the front of Patch, my one and only rose courtesy of Lori over at http://gardenerofgoodandevil.blogspot.com/ has started to bloom, to the delight of my eldest who always complains to me about the lack of “flowers” in the Patch.

“And you said we do not have flowers.” I made a smug point of telling her, as I pulled the stalk of this lily behind her ear.

The inside color of the rose (I have no idea what it is called, Lori?) as an added bonus, picks up on the house trim color.

She does have a point though, I naturally gravitate toward foliage and texture in preference to “flowers.” The amaranth on the left has got huge because it always receives a wash of water when I empty the paddling pool, I like the way it plays on the burgundy color of the rear canna lily.

This little Mexican weeping bamboo was part of the root-ball from the main plant when I moved it from the front of the house. I planted it not really thinking it would develop into anything and kept watering and watering…finally it pushed up some tiny stalks, and made my day. It looks great contrasting with the wide Hoja Santa leaves that I keep snapping off to allow more light to penetrate.

Talking of foliage, my pride of Barbados plants have been taking center-stage in my cactus/succulent bed this week.

You know it is summer when you see these burning embers swaying in the wind. A really great tropical look, and one really tough plant.

Another summer salvia sizzler. Even the blooms on this plant seem to be gasping for cooler air…can you feel the Texas heat yet?

And panning back a little further, the refreshing powder-blue flowers on this Agastache ‘Blue Fortune Hyssop’ (excuse me) are really pulling in the bees. This is one of the plants I received from High Country Gardens / Gardening Gone Wild photography competition, it seems to like Texas! This deer-proof plant has a great licorice scent to the leaves, and along with my mist flowers and vitex is an amazing bee and butterfly magnet. The pale blue blooms visually pop against a dark backdrop such as this canna.

See!…more flowers!

Coneflowers and Phlox…

…even my oregano is following suite!

“Forgetabout the flowers, plant more nut trees ESP, y’ hear me?”

I keep seeing this albino squirrel all over the Patch, lounging here, hanging over there and I have no idea where the New Jersey accent came from. Every time I look up into the oaks, there he is…studying me with unblinking, pale pink eyes…Brrrr!

Moving on…

“Hand over the Jewels of Opar Goldmember”!

“You are mishinformed Mr Bond.. I have no jewels…a terrible shmelting accident.”

With the discovery of this little plant hiding behind this bolder, my jewel count is now up to three new Opars! This is what they looked like at the end of last year…

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/10/halloween-2009/

Finally…

Has anyone ever witnessed one of these? A most bizarre creature that caused tears and a run into the house for my elder hobbit…all thighs and feelers and an apparently strong desire to stay firmly attached to her!

Stay Tuned for:

“Tales of the Unexpected”

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Snips & Snails & Swallowtails

ESPatch Jun 8, 2010 9 comments

Coneflowers are blooming their happy looking heads off in the Patch right now…

They are like strange alien palm trees stretching their other-worldly rocket silhouettes up into the martian sky.

Echinacea has to be one of the most cheerful blooms…

and as an unexpected surprise, the waning olive / orange hues of the seed-heads blend well with the new paint color on our house, courtesy of the infamous Chevy Tahoe.

Talking of purple-orange things:

I caught this Pipevine Swallowtail larvae

Battus philenor

moving at full steam across the decomposed granite in my front garden, and was it moving fast. It paused briefly to allow me to get these shots in, before it was off again.

Both the caterpillars and the adults are very conspicuous, promoting their protection of noxious chemicals that they obtain from the poisonous plants on which they feed, specifically pipevine plants in the genus Aristolochia.

Pipevine Swallowtail adults are black and the males have an amazing electroluminescent blue sheen to their hind wings. Females sometimes have a hint of the blue but are mostly black. The undersides of the hind wings are decorated with white and orange spots. When they feed, Pipevine Swallowtails rarely stop fluttering, making it hard to get a good look at them, and a decent picture.

Okay, one final purple… and one of my unruly favorite plants is wafting its incredible Gothic scent all over the Patch right now…Evergreen Wisteria:

Millettia reticulata

I say unruly, as this plant requires a significant amount of space and support and pruning. I have three of these plants in the Patch and they all boom a slightly different times, lucky for me. This one always is the early bloomer, sprawling over trellises that I have positioned behind my bench.

The aroma sitting on this bench right now is amazing, reminding me of dank, patchouli infused, London Gothic night clubs that I used to frequent as a vampire in another life.

On the vegetable front:

After transplanting last weeks tobacco hornworms my tomatoes continue to produce in large numbers…

Although the pest onslaught has continued…

“Were getting close lads…1st platoon, on my order…”

One of my eggplants also had some rather unsavory visitors:

The bottom fruit of this eggplant had pushed itself into the soil on the inside of the stock-tank, on prizing it to the outside of the tank, I immediately noticed that something was horribly wrong:

Eww, Eww, and more Eww!

“Why you little…”

My tomatillo plants on the other hand are bug free and going completely bananas…I have never grown these peppers before, and I had no idea these plants would get this large.

Pole beans are finally ascending well, after a slow start, with the recent showers and rains we have had in Central Texas.

Finally:

Pride of Barbados is breaking into bloom. One of my favorite foliage plants.

My Datura silk handkerchiefs have now turned into these droopy, umbrella-canopied seed pods.

In an adjacent loquat, I captured this…

…a silver-spotted skipper, another first in the Patch, and check out that white paint spill! The war-paint looks like it has been painted on.

Epargyreus clarus

This is a large dark brown butterfly with long pointed forewings and white patches on the undersides of the hind wings, and orange patches on the forewings. This skipper rarely sits with wings completely open. More often they are held together or just slightly separated just like this one.

“Ach! I prefer the white and tan, ah knew the blue was a buug mistake!”