Spring 2010

“Chicken and Hell-Strips”

ESPatch May 2, 2010 5 comments

Everything in the Patch is in full spring swing…myself?

I have spent two days swinging a shovel at this…a new and most welcome pile of decomposed granite in my hell-strip. A few weeds had already started to pop up here and there, it was time for the final push. My hell-strip has looked like a construction site ever since I laid down sheets of weed suppressant material and subsequent bricks to hold it down, it looked really bad. This was all about to change…I wrapped an iced turban around my head, took a deep meditative breath, cursed a few times just to get me in the mode, then filled up my first wheelbarrow full of the golden soil… I was off!

Some hours later things were looking a whole lot calmer in the Patch’s hell-strip. I divided and transplanted a bunch of bamboo muhly from the back of the Patch, these now line both sides of the pathway from the street. This will ultimately hide the edges of the pathway and visually soften the approach from the street. The agave in the foreground courtesy of Lori at: http://gardenerofgoodandevil.blogspot.com/ will eventually fill up this entire front corner, hence the intentionally sparse planting scheme. Toward the sidewalk are some blackfoot daisies and a couple of bulbines.

On the other side a couple of whirling butterflies (gaura) went in, both white and pink varieties. That is another artemesia hill in the background, oh yes, you can’t have too many of those silver hills, right Pam?

These artemesia were snapped off from my plants in the back of the Patch, and just stuck in the ground. I had about an 90% success rate on these transplants in the most atrocious and unamended soil conditions known to mankind.

It will take a while to fill in but I am so happy that I can now say I am 100% grass/Bermuda free.

“Hurah… Three cheers for ESP ladies.”

One last shot of the front, yes I like rosemary can you tell? And why the gathering crowd?

Only in the Patch!

This visitor just turned up, clucking away under our car, the hobbits were delighted to feed it some seeds. This chicken and a recent visit to Callahan’s general store has fueled the desire for a few chickens in the Patch. I am not sure how long my delaying strategies and excuses will work at this point. To make it worse my eldest watched a young girl in the store purchase a baby rabbit…Arrgh!

“Why can’t we have a rabbit daddy? (repeat 27.5 times in the car) …the .5? …Well, that was when I started to get annoyed.

Some time later…

I always get a little nervous when things go too quite for any length of time in the Patch, the silence just sort of seeps into my psyche until it is so loud, that I inherently know that some snail, worm, or pill bug is getting involved in some form of bizarre, and totally inappropriate experiment. Even worse are the “soup” creations, these culinary masterpieces usually involve critters, water, sand and plants in a particularly disgusting combination. This is especially gross when the obnoxious “soup” is unknowingly thrust directly under ones nasal passages when you are least expecting it.

The disturbing silence is usually followed by a hunched over scene like the one above… the crazy scientist hard at work in a secluded corner of his lab.

What is he doing?… I hid deeper in the ornamental grasses and quietly observed.

He swung around completely out of control as the force of the jet stream made the hose lunge, he hung on for dear life, the force of the blast immediately creating a Donald Trump hair style.

He had discovered the hose next to my feeder tank, and it didn’t take him long to harness its power.

“Promising, this hobbit looks.”

He had the time of his life, though it was quite difficult to keep him focused on filling up the feeder tank. Spraying the jet skyward was naturally a lot more entertaining, and a bonus if the water came down on top of himself. That would initiate the belly laughs .

All the time he was doing this water play, his sister was striking a pose in her latest cowgirl outfit on the Patch’s front porch.

Is your Giant Timber not quite right this year?

What manner of witchcraft and skulduggery is this?

All of mine are acting very peculiar…very peculiar indeed. I have few black culms, this is a first, not sure if these are dead or not, so far there has been no lateral growth on these now exotic looking culms. The other thing that is out of whack is the amount of small culms emerging from the base.

“It is like the bamboo has regressed Captain”.

“I see that Spock”.

I am optimistic the large culms are on the way up, getting prepared to push up a few more bricks on my brick patio…I can only hope!

Oleander is one of the most poisonous plants in the world, it contains numerous toxic compounds, many of which can be deadly to people, especially young children.

Toxic or not I have to have them, and when blooming they are hard to beat for their tropical flare.

Talking of flare, I caught this hairy character on the porch of my in-laws house on a recent visit…

This caterpillar is known strangely as the Laugher,

Charadra deridens

it feeds on the leaves of beeches, birches, elms, oaks, and other broad-leaf trees.

Its body is pale with very distinctive long, silky white setae. The Head is black with yellow band between eyes (usually) or white with darkened band across the front. This caterpillar turns into this…

The laugher moth.

“I like this moth, I really do.”

Moving on…

It looks like a fern…it looks like a flower…

It looks like something that I will be gathering the seeds from quite soon. This plant was given to me at a recent Austin “Design a GoGo” gathering by Bob at Draco http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/

and it has grown at an amazing rate, a really interesting and unusual frond bloom. More on this one later.

As I wearily trudged to my bench for some R&R after a full day of granite shoveling and hell-strip action, I was feeling quite satisfied.

“Hell-strip action, baby…yeah”!

I cracked open a freezing cold beer and looked across the Patch, happy to take the weight of my legs which always take the brunt of the work if you are shoveling correctly. I took my first cold sip, then heard a cluck, clucking directly behind me in my neighbors yard.

Eeek, Eeek, Cluck, Cluck!

Was it following me? I immediately remembered the ridiculous scene from the movie “Withnail and I”…

I decided to ignore it.

I took another deep sip and continued to look straight ahead of me for fear of catching it’s crazy eye.

Stay Tuned for:

“Knotty Dreads”

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

“Lady-bug-Gaga”

ESPatch Apr 16, 2010 20 comments

“Aw, I make a great ladybug, don’t you think ESP?”

“Oh yeah, looking real good now Lady Gaga!”

Ladybug! Ladybug!

Fly away home.

Your house is on fire.

And your children all gone.

All except one,

And that’s little Ann,

For she crept under

The artemesia plant.

In Britain ladybugs are referred to as ‘ladybirds.’ It is believed that the word Ladybird was substituted for Ladybug in the American version of the nursery rhyme, due to the word association with Firebug meaning an arsonist or pyromaniac. There has been some speculation that the rhyme originates from the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666.

photo by Steve VanGunda

Farmers of old knew the value of having the ladybirds around, reducing the amount of pests in their crops, it was traditional to cry out the rhyme before they burnt their fields following harvests.

I have a bumper infestation of ladybird larvae and ladybugs on my artemesia this year,

I had no idea this plant was such an attractant or host, another good reason to have a bunch of it.

I caught up with another large ladybug looking creature that was actually a beetle, a Milkweed Leaf Beetle:

Labidomera cliviollis

It was clambering around rather clumsily in this feather grass, the grass not able to hold it’s weight.

While we are on the subject of insects:

This metal dragonfly from the creative iron-working hands of Bob over there at: http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/ was a real hit in the Patch this week, and no accidents so far Bob!

It gets a tweaking at every opportunity:

The scorpion hook has taken pride of place in our hallway, I hung it down low for the hobbits to hang their coats on, the pincers are great for holding their Tolkien rings.

Thank you!

The elder hobbit now keeps asking…“so who is Bob”?

Oh yes, someone giving her gifts? She has to get to the bottom of it.

One last bug communication I overheard this week…

“Wait lads! Let me make sure the coast is clear”…

(Dog Whistles back over shoulder) then moves a bunch of legs in a series of marine-like gestures…

Winged reproductive termites

“Go! Go! Go!

I first noticed these alates (winged) or primary reproductive termites when a mocking bird dove over my head, did some mid-air aerobatics to snag a couple as they emerged from the side of my house. I quickly honed in with my camera…first one, then a few, then they began streaming out of my house like bats coming out from under Congress bridge. This exodus is referred to as a dispersal nuptial flight, it is commonly referred to as swarming. If I wasn’t there taking pictures of the event I am sure the birds would have been in a full-on feeding frenzy. When the alates receive the proper cues (warm temperatures, bright sunlight, low winds, for example) they will leave the colony and fly away to start their own. Male and female termites shed their rainbow colored wings and will pair up when a suitable mate is found. When termites swarm they are often misidentified as “flying ants”, due to their visual similarities.

“Enough of this insect nonsense ESP, move with haste towardeth the plant talk!”

Central Texas has had some sporadic light drizzles this past week, and a little rain…

…drizzles that left water jewels defying gravity on the grasses…

and a dusting of dew on my hearts…

“Yes, yes” (obligatory noises).

…moisture that made the ragworts perspire.

Along with the moisture naturally came the now traditional, ESP snail hunt…

…and quite the bounty there was to had for nimble picking fingers, by the time they had finished, this bucket was three quarters full.

When the sun made it out again, later in the day, I was emphatically summoned to the back of the garden for some sushi…the goldfish! Oh no the goldfish!…Could they? Would they?

“Allez cuisine!”

Thankfully this was the vegetarian feast that was awaiting me at the end of the garden, complete with post-oak chopsticks. I thought the bamboo husks were a nice Michelin-star touch from my elder hobbit. While I was devouring my garden sushi, (holding my head back and dropping it to the ground), I noticed that my oldest clump of giant timber bamboo had developed fresh growth at it’s base…

…the funny thing was, the foliage was variegated? Very odd, but I am not complaining.

The sun also dried out the barbed seeds that have now formed on my feather grasses, not sure if I should go around and strip these seeds now before they have a chance to blow around and germinate, what would you do? I must have…

“Hmmm”…

“A million seedlings?”

My loquats are in loquat heaven with the recent moisture, combined with a rather wet winter.

My stone crop waterfall is also starting to bloom with tiny white pendants that hang over the slabs. This great little plant seems to grow where there is no soil. I think it is now rooting on the debris that my Post Oak is emitting.