Toads

“Counting Sheep”

ESPatch Oct 2, 2011 13 comments

agave parryi truncata

Still no rain, lots of dust, and a summer cold for me…there, moaning all done for this week’s post.

This sad little gulf coast toad looks exactly how I feel at this point in the drought, I gave him a good dowsing with the watering can and quickly got him into some shade. I have been noticing quite a few dead toads around lately. I think the damp shady places that they rely on during the day have, like everything else,

turned to dust under the death rays.

WARNING…WARNING…

…never attempt to extract giant timber bamboo unless under the supervision of an adult.

I have been putting this task off since last winter when this huge giant timber bamboo got hammered by our hard freezes. Although it was pushing up new culms I was not prepared to go through this mess again. No, there was only one thing for it.

This monster almost got the better of me, and I am very determined when it comes to extracting plants that need to be extracted.

It was the most stubborn root-ball I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. I started to work around it with my heaviest pointed shovel but I could get no movement out of it at all, it was like concrete, it was horrible. As the pace and the sweat quickened, the cut culms began to look more and more like octopus suckers, clinging to the soil…pick axe, rockbar, pick axe, shovel and then naturally…

Snap! The force and speed of this breakage had me pirouetting out over the cut culms, which in-turn had me stumbling uncontrollably (zombie-like) into the adjacent hoja santa plants which were already quite unhappy.

Shovel #2.

Half an our later and lots of other creaking from shovel #2 and I finally heard some popping, music to my ears…I had beached the whale.

Just what I need, another bare patch in the patch.

Moving along:

Texas sage is once again offering up more false promises or rain.

and the inland sea oats are now in full fall color.

Celosia is pretty scarce in the Patch this year, most of it just wilted away like greens in a warm salad, this stand is my final hope for seeds this fall. These plants have been receiving supplemental water from my neighbor who is working to keep his struggling post oak alive.

I did notice a big change in the light quality this week, I think the summer (if not the drought) is finally fading behind us…and good riddance.

Here are a couple of gross things to ponder…

relax, this one does not seek shelter in houses. This is a female

Arenivaga

(arena meaning sand and vagus meaning wandering)

It is a genus of sand cockroaches, what a primordial looking creature…brrr.

And this next one was taken on an iPhone by my wife:

Scutigera coleoptrata

or a house centipede.

They are secretive,very odd looking and move with strange darting motions, and because of this homeowners typically fear the house centipede. Should you come across this very shy creature you might very well be inclined to immediately take your slipper to it, but these are actually beneficial in your home since they rid you of other pests like spiders,bedbugs,termites,cockroaches silverfish,firebrats,carpet beetle larvae ants and other household arthropods.

I found this pest lurking under the bed,

Kuminus Fangstratus

a vicious nocturnal creature.

Finally:

Apart from the Texas Sages, oleander and my mist flowers are about the only thing that are both blooming and still looking good, talk about plants that can weather the storm (or in this case the lack of it).

These Poecilognathus – a kind of bee fly (Diptera: Bombyliidae) covered the pale blue blooms. (Thanks for the ID meredee)

As there is not much to do in the garden but wait, (and cut down dead bamboo). I decided this week to give my own pathways a quick replenishment of the golden soil.

I do this every few years as the granite degrades and packs down.

After a hard day’s work there is nothing better than playing the smurfs next to her now sleepy Kuminus Fangstratus.

Inspirational image of the week:

Car Part Sculptor by James Corbett.

James Corbett is a renowned eco friendly artist and is known to create awesome sculpture from waste auto parts.

http://www.jamescorbettart.com/default.html

Stay Tuned for:

“French Fork”

All material © 2011 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

“Detector”

ESPatch Sep 2, 2011 10 comments

I thought that I would start this post of with a cheerful yet strangely (in these days) controversial “how life started”, shortly before diving into significant amounts of death and continued moaning.

This little anole looks exactly how I feel.

This unfortunate chap was fried in the bottom of my “everything but the kitchen sink” rainwater collection “system”, which has been bone dry for quite some time, in fact it now functions more like a convection oven. I try and check for stray anoles in this tank as much as I can but this one slipped through my vigilance net apparently right onto the scorching galvanized steel griddle base, he did not stand a chance with our Austin temperatures currently comparable to the aftermath of Mount Vesuvius’s eruption.

After hearing about some compost piles spontaneously combustion in our area this week…(yes that is how hot it is), I no longer venture close to mine, just in case. I know how much nitrogen is in there!

Maggie and Jim, (my neighbors on the other side from poor Ernie), recently emptied some greens into their compost barrel, it was a terrible affair.

This fatsia japonica also self-combusted this past week. I believe the reflected heat from the stock tank made it croak…all my other aralias are coping just fine.

There is still life at the base so my hopes are tentatively high for a full recovery, which is more than I can hope for from my feeder stock tank.

Shortly after topping up this sunken tank that I use to dechlorinate water before I siphon it into my main fish pond, I noticed that it was no longer retaining its contents.

On closer inspection I noticed that it had developed holes in the rust around its perimeter which is really annoying as now I have to dig it out and replace it.

It appears that our Austin tap water, will, over a few years, disintegrate galvanized steel stock tanks, well, that is my theory, any thoughts? My main pond, receiving predominately dechlorinated water is still devoid of any rust and subsequent degradation, it is eight years old and still going strong. This tank will spend its autumn years as another bog pond, well, can you have too many?

While I scurried around the tank hunting for the leak,

I came face to faces with these two gulf-coast toads under a lily pad.

In the heat of the midday sun even the small chain-link leaves on my pride of Barbados close up to reflect the suns deadly rays.

Here it is behind a stressed out sago, still it is not all doom and gloom…

…grasses, yucca, sages and laurels don’t seem to care about the weather. While I was in this neck of the Patch I decided I would replenish the protective ring of Diatomaceous Earth around the base of the soft leaf yucca, in case, along with everything else, it had dried-up and blown-away.

Everone knows that there is nothing soft about soft leaf yucca, and trying to apply a ring of very fine powder around the base of one, in a 111 degree temperatures, ranks up there on the arm stabbing annoyance scale with pruning sotols.

Arm Stabbing Annoyance Scale:

So what is this Diatomaceous Earth anyway?

It is fitting that we started with evolution, skeletons and lots of dead plants as Diatomaceous earth is actually made from fossilized water plants, specifically, unicellular algae-like plants called diatoms. It is believed that 30 million years ago the diatoms built up into deep, chalky deposits of diatomite.

Here are some live ones from Antarctica:

Photographer: Prof. Gordon T. Taylor, Stony Brook University
Credit: NSF Polar Programs

Photo: wikipedia:

The diatoms are mined and ground up to render a powder that looks and feels like talcum powder. It is a mineral based pesticide. The fine powder absorbs lipids from the waxy outer layer of insects’ exoskeletons, causing them to dehydrate and die.

I am using it to protect my agaves and yuccas from the terror that lies below the nose of the evil agave snout weevil, and so far it appears to be working.

I was really happy to find (in-between the puncture wounds and the foul language) that my yucca has had some babies, quadruplets in fact. These will be moved to new pastures as soon as my metal shovel cools down enough to be handled.

Moving on:

It arrived in a small UPS box that was eagerly ripped open like a Willy Wonka chocolate bar by some little hands, excitement was high with the prospect of discovering precious materials, gems and all manner of other imaginary bounties.

Their junior metal detector had finally arrived. They wasted no time in getting out into the garden (as you can tell from his attire) and within minutes, armed with my garden trowel, dug out a penny. Thus began a treasure hunting obsession and I am sure the demise of my decomposed granite pathways – good thing that I plan on replenishing them in the next few weeks.

It could only be a matter of time before the jackpot was hit, surely.

So far the prospectors have successfully found…

mm, not quite…

but it is treasure to them.

Inspirational (if rather odd) Image of the week:

This garden shower by Viteo is an upside down shower. You connect it to your garden hose and by stepping on it 4 meter high water jets cool you down. I want these as weight activated stepping stones all the way down to my shed in preparation for next year’s summer…ahhh.