Stories

“Notre Dame it’s got Cold”

ESPatch Oct 7, 2012 4 comments

One final fling around the water park before the cooler temperatures descend over central Texas.

A water park that comes to life with an amazing light show as the sun goes down.

There are also lots of plants providing great fall color in the Patch,

they may be leggy (pruning negligence on my part) but these Mexican Leucantha still pack a snaking purple punch.

Salvia and the first celosia seed heads are starting to form,

these will be turning little fingers pink when I bribe my halflings with some extra allowance to harvest the seeds.

Thryalis is also putting on a fine performance at the back of my post oak,

head high, they are attracting shiny tiny hover flies / flower flies.

Allograpta obliqua

Flower Flies resemble wasps and bees. Despite their tribal markings, they are totally harmless and beneficial pollinators of flowers.

The larvae are also partial to aphids.

There are a lot of yellow flowers currently in bloom, it has been a bumper year for bitterweed all over Austin this year. Bitterweed is a yellow-flowered annual weed that thrives in poor soil and turban defying Hell-strip temperatures. Bitterweed poisoning is a major problem for sheep in the Southwest, it is a member of the sunflower family and is closely related to Colorado rubberweed both in appearance and in the rather nasty effects it can have on sheep if ingested.

Luckily for me, I do not have any sheep in my Hell strip, an occasional lost chicken perhaps, but no sheep. I like the free-form meadow aesthetic this cheerful plant creates and it works well set against a backdrop of bamboo muhly, another Hell-strip veteran.

“The bells, the bells…Esperanza.”

One more that is in the process of turning yellow:

Satsuma. The fruit this year are particularly large. I wonder if this little tree will beat the previous fruiting record of 97 set in 2009?

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2009/11/the-leaf-the-witch-and-the-waterfeature/

There may well be a blogging competition in here; guess (or be the closest) to the exact number of satsumas? And no, the winner will not inherit our house elf.

Other things observed this week:

Bluebonnets are on the rise,

and the mysterious “brains” have been spotted, floating once again in the pond.

“ackack-ackack“

Interestingly these have not yet “grown” the disturbing spinal column that I usually see dangling on the underside of them.

This just in…

Remember this?

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/07/%E2%80%9Cgarden-coffins%E2%80%9D/

Well at the persistent and repetitious “aww can we go to that new place, you know the one where the other one was, can we?” monthly monologue from my elder halfling, we finally broke down and took her to the newly reopened restaurant. I say this somewhat lightheartedly as I really had my own hidden agenda for going there, and it wasn’t the food.

I wanted to see for myself if new ownership had decided to tackle the now infamous, sarcophagus restaurant planter.

And to my amazement they had!

I got out of our vehicle, heart pounding, and rounded the familiar strip-mall corner (mild panic attack) only to come face to face with a healthy and centrally planted loquat…a loquat! Squeals ensued followed by a considerable amount of shushing and hand waving on my part in case the front of house was listening to us just inside the establishment doors.

A pleasant end to a rather long, drawn out story I thought to myself, then I remembered the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and started craving shellfish.

Finally:

I will leave you with some before and after visualizations of the latest ESP design:

A silver and gold approach eats into the hell-strip, widening and softening the property entryway. Two ‘blue ice’ cypress sentries stand guard flanking the gate.

The small box store pond was not at all fitting with the scale of the grounds, it was also situated opposite the front door, a natural entry-place to the garden. I replaced this with a wide and inviting limestone edged pathway that draws the eye down into a seating area and up around the second tier planting beds.

Here is the left side of the same bed with a meandering pathway leading up to a second tier shade bed.

Here is something to sleep-on courtesy of my friend Bob over at: http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/

Sweet dreams.

Brrr…and a bit more Brrr!

Stay Tuned for:

“Fantastic Mr Phlox”

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

“House Elf”

ESPatch Sep 16, 2012 8 comments

I was delighted to find out recently that our family had inherited a new house-elf…”Kreature-Kumo”.

On arrival at the Patch he made himself immediately at home roaming and grumbling down our hallway. He has kept himself quite occupied this past week dusting pictures, getting the kids up for school, cooking full-English breakfasts etc. In fact now I cannot imagine our existence without him.

Adorning some old rags and a particularly acute case of halitosis, it appears he has a propensity for devouring large amounts of small plastic toys, postmen and all manner of disgusting things at the bottom of the garden.

Naughty, stinky Kreature-Kumo!

Freshening rains, cooler temperatures and darkened days have provided a welcome reprieve from the Texas sun this week. Sad loquats perked up, a couple of burgundy fountain grass were flattened and poor cactus-man (jr) took one for the team from a rather flatulent and highly accurate bird…

The irony here continues, allow me to recap on this opuntia paddle’s tragic existence and amazing resurrection story:

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

I spent 4 years pruning back a few opuntia paddles to enlarge them for a very specific and rather horrendous Patch experiment. Some of you may remember the endeavor.

I decided I was going to gouge eye-holes (and carve a mouth) in this opuntia paddle after seeing a picture of a successfully carved paddle in a popular gardening magazine.

After I had performed the “procedure” my massive cactus paddle went almost immediately into shock (I had apparently carved overtly enlarged features) as did the rest of his family (they shared a common root system).

Stress lines around the eyes appeared,

moisture seemed to be leaving his emaciated body on a daily bases, he grimaced and so did I every time I had to walk past him.

And then finally…

This is where it starts getting strange.

Some time later, after he was laid to rest, another cactus paddle mysteriously grew back from the roots at the exact same place and angle,

only this time he returned from his shallow grave with two “already formed” eye holes (evolutionary survival tactics…I am convinced), I couldn’t believe it.

I inserted a tiny glass monocle into the smaller of his “new”eyes (I have no idea why), and now, after enduring all of this, a bird goes and does this:

Poor junior.

I think he (the original paddle) may be trying to send me a message from across the veil.

“I have a “Cactus-Man” coming through for a gardening person on my left. I am getting an image of a green thumb and he is showing me three letters “ES..D?

He is communicating a horrible accident involving multiple family members…he keeps repeating Fis…Fisk…

Fiskars?

Errr…

Moving sharply along:

It is very sharp up here on this golden barrel plateau but well worth the hike, the cactus continues to put out these amazing flowers.

Here are the barrels shrouded behind Juniors resurrected family.

This is what is left of my hydrangea:

It took 6 months of steady decline for the plant to reach this minimalist /completely dead stage.

Giant timber bamboo always looks very tropical after rain,

if only my garden shed was an all-teak construction…

…exactly.

Imagine this structure with

some Alphonse Karr bamboo planted around the foundation.

My soft leaf yucca,

Yucca recurvifolia

is producing pups as fast as I can plant them.

This is its second asparagus-looking flower spike of the year.

Pride of Barbados have nearly finished depositing seeds from their dug-out canoes.

Seen any of these colorful velvet moths lurking in your salvias?

This is a southern pink moth,

Pyrausta inornatalis

and this is its larva:

Photograph by Donald R Riley

I have read that these polka dotted chaps can demolish a stand of salvia but I never have had this problem myself.

Finally:

Congratulations on your advancement from the daisies to being a fully fledged Brownie!

Now, back to the Patch with you,

you have Autumn chores to do if you want to get that professional metal detector.

“Chores!”

Stay Tuned for:

“Agavephobia”

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