Stock Tanks

“Biddy from Sligo”

ESPatch Dec 1, 2012 6 comments

I thought this week I would start off with something a bit different, like a wee tune on my practice chanter just to put your nerves on edge. Someone told me recently that the chanter (a learning and practicing instrument for the highland bagpipes) sounded like an old Atari video game!

A keen observation.

“Star Raiders”…one of my favorites…oh yes, it had…radar.

The tune is a 6/8 jig by P/M G.S. McLennan called the “Biddy from Sligo” and I believe it was adapted from an old Irish fiddle tune. Sligo is located in the northwest of Ireland, about forty miles from the border with Northern Ireland.

And if you are unsure what a “biddy” is, it is a woman, usually a garrulous old one, a great word – garrulous.

Note to self: You really must work on developing a circular breathing technique.

Cold fronts have brought with them some amazing sunsets this past week.

Calm down Alex, they are just street lights!

And the ominous green glow I am sure is not a competitor Mr White…

….though they were on campus…everybody, calm down.

No sooner had Thanksgiving day arrived, the “can we get a Christmas tree now Pa, can we?” (repeat x14.5 more times) started. The .5 interruption was for a “oh for heavens sake…YES, lets go and get a Christmas tree!”

Okay there was no “Pa” involved in the conversation, but it seemed like there should have been.

Returning with the tree, I had the usual scrummage to get it into the house and supported in its incredibly annoying (too big for the tree) base. Clawing and orbiting away underneath it for some time, turning annoyingly short screws into the trunk and finally giving an annoyingly dense lower canopy water, I emerged triumphant…covered in sap and needles, sarcastically humming in a twisted key: “tis the season to be jolly”.

I trudged off in 80 degree weather to get the decorations from my shed.

They wasted no time getting reacquainted with some shiny old friends.

Concentrate.

Kumo is also getting into the spirit of the season,

“Halleluiah!”

I hear him every day practicing his choir solo.

Moving ridiculously along:

“Throw another…

…on the barbie mate.”

And what a great display the langoustines have put on this year.

A shrimp-plant cocktail.

Justicia brandegeana

A great plant for vibrant shade color, drought tolerant, tough and slightly eccentric, shrimp plant is supposedly one of the best hummingbird plants for shady areas, although I have yet to see one on mine.

I really enjoyed this stock tank for a while,

but recently a chunk of the horsetail reed died, the Persian ivy looked like a moth-eaten old rug and well the whole scene had started to generally grate on my nerves.

Digging out a stock tank employs the same strange physics as Doctor Who’s Tardis, it is amazing how much earth comes out of a small tank. I also resurrected a whole bunch of old flagstone and bricks and rocks that I had forgotten about that I had “conveniently” swept under the carpet / tank some time ago. Argh.

I will spare you a description of all the unmentionables that scattered around my ankles as I pushed over the now-emptied stock tank, but I will say this…Brrr.

I believe my impromptu highland dance performance would have won a trophy if under adjudication.

Here is the area all cleared out awaiting a fresh top-dressing of decomposed granite and possibly a future archery target.

“Shhh!”

Finally:

How about this for a celosia seed head!

Thanks for a great day at the Ranch J&W, we all had a blast.

Stay Tuned for:

“Jings, Crivvens, Help ma Boab”

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

“Hexing Herbs”

ESPatch Oct 31, 2012 6 comments

Jimson weed, jamestown-weed, Mad apple, devil’s apple, devil’s trumpet, devil’s weed, stink weed, apple of Peru, malpitte,

a lot of names for one plant.

Commonly known as datura, these seedpods give an indication that you don’t want

to mess with this plant. It just looks dangerous.

The word Datura comes from Hindi dhatura (thorn apple),

though this is one apple you don’t want to be biting into, an apple a day keeps the doctor away? Probably not in this case.

Datura was considered particularly sacred in Ancient India as it was believed to be a favorite of the Hindu god Shiva Nataraja, the Lord of Dance.

According to Hindu mythology, Shiva’s cosmic dance represents the fundamental energy of the universe.

Sphingid moth on datura trumpet.

European usage of Datura can be traced back to pagan rituals. The Church suppressed knowledge of the plant during the medieval witch-burning period and associated Datura and other similar plants with the

The plant belongs to the classic “witches’ weeds,”along with deadly nightshade, henbane, wolfsbane and

mandrake, among others.

Witches, like the shamans of the Americas, often used psychoactive plants to search for inner wisdom, to divine the future or to find answers to life’s deeper questions.

One of the hallucinogenic potions used by these “witches” was a concoction called the flying ointment, (I am sure for a very good reason). It was a rather lethal brew made from the so-called “hexing herbs,” one of which is datura.

The ingredients were rendered down in fat – requiring some sort of large pot (cauldron), a long implement would have been required to stir the bubbling mixture (like a broomstick handle).

Datura contains chemicals that are extremely toxic and dangerous. In non-lethal doses however, these chemicals cause delirium, amnesia, delusions and hallucinations vivid enough that the witch ingesting the potion would genuinely believe that she was flying, coming back to earth a few days later, no doubt with a bump.

Today the image of the witch cackling and “flying” around under the moonlight on her broomstick still remains a cultural iconic image…

…thank goodness.

***Disclaimer: To anyone reading this, please do not experiment with this plant, witches and shamans knew exactly what they were doing.

Halloween excitement has been brewing all this week in the Patch, this bleeding zombie appeared more interested in the texture of these coneflowers rather than the procurement

of more brains. I have no shortage of these unidentified little brains that are found floating in my pond.

Moving along:

Bees,

Snout Nose Butterflies,

Libytheana carinenta

queen butterflies,

gray hair streaks and a bunch of these

tiny Syrphid hoverflies have all been feeding all week on nectar produced by my purple and fragrant mist flowers.

I have three fragrant mist flowers planted together for maximum punch, when these fully open it is insect mayhem.

The moths on these flowers appear to have consumed too much nectar and are now not adverse to being “handled”.

Happy Halloween from the pumpkin Patch.