shrubs

“They’re under Starters Orders…”

ESPatch May 9, 2012 6 comments

…and they’re off!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a fantastic turn out today to witness this, the second annual ESPill-bug derby, broadcast live via morning glory satellite.

Lord Kumo was chauffeured in earlier today in customary fashion,

and was to be seated in his usual “Royal” stinky box seat...

…only to find that it had already been occupied.

Garnet is off to an early lead and setting a punishing (running for her life) pace.

“Go Garnet…go Garnet (clapping)”

Clearing out a pile of decaying leaves recently I exposed a bunch of roly polies that were quickly snapped up by dirty nimble fingers. A few minutes later they all had names; Ruby, Chirp, Garnet, Peep and Quack, nice names for some terrestrial crustaceans…snort.

I continued to listen to their exploits as I raked. I witnessed the gut-wrenching tragedy of Chirp rolling himself up and disappearing between the cracks in the picnic table (I kept raking) and the simultaneous elation at Garnet having crawled over the finish line to win the derby and her freedom from small fingered tyranny.

“Ach, and I thought I had it bad, poor wee beasties.”

After a significant “Chirp-hunt” under the table, and a number of mosquito bites later the search was called off.

It was Ruby, Peep and Quack that I felt sorry for.

Brrr.

Moving along:

My feather grasses are now entering

this rather annoying phase. I am steadily accumulating a huge pile of these filament ladened socks on my back porch.

With the skies opening up and delivering some well needed rain in Central Texas this week, plants

and toadstools have gone into overdrive.

Sedum reflexum ‘Blue Spruce’,

I said Blue Spruce,

wasted no time absorbing the moisture, a very aquatic looking succulent.

As did this Bauhinia corymbosa vine, great for adding depth and a layered look.

Burgundy canna lily…plant it in a large container, cover drainage hole with duct tape and watch it grow and smolder.

It works great paired with giant King Tut papyrus.

It is like the Blitz in this tank that houses the smaller dwarf papyrus variety.

Moving Along:

Spending time on my front porch right now conjures up disturbing memories of “The Ruins”.

This red passion vine is clawing its way toward my front door at about a foot a day.

Who said there was a lack of flowers in the Patch…

Finally…

My front (almost as high a maintenance as the Botox Lady) vitex is now in full bloom,

Sago palm.

I always like the new growth on sago palms…before the leaves get lodged in there and mess it all up.

Stay Tuned for:

“Jack and the Sotolstalk”

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

Inspirational image of the week:

“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.