“Wind Chimes and my Post Oak”

ESPatch May 19, 2008 2 comments

Never try this unless supervised by an adult.

This tale starts out of greed, greed for the largest wind chimes I could afford and struggle home with. It is funny, chimes sound very soothing with the wind blowing gently through them, but as soon as you try to pick them up and carry them they turn into the chimes from Hell…clanking nonsense. There I was in The Great Outdoors nursery in Austin, eying-up some monster chimes. Like a complete nerd I had to try each one to find the one with “just the right notes and tonality”. (You immediately forget what the previous set sounds like). Back and forth I went like an obsessed percussionist to the dismay of the nursery’s staff.

I finally settled on the “set for me” – large but not too large, a deep zen sound with a slight discord . . . perfect! I clanked my way to my truck and settled them down in the truck-bed with a blood-curdling, teeth-clenching sound (metal on metal) and rushed home to hoist them to their new home high in the trees.

The first inclination that this was going to be slightly tasking was when I had gathered the “mad octopus” clinking in one of my arms and started to head up my stepladder, which incidentally kept sinking into a bed of mulch. The gravity of my predicament started with the sudden awareness that the chimes were extremely heavy. I then realized that I had to go up very high on my stepladder to get the chimes to a tree limb high enough so that I wouldn’t be continuously hitting my head when walking underneath them. After 45 minutes of struggling in the heat with my “mad octopus” my new chimes were “up” in the Pecan tree next to my back deck. When I say “up” I actually meant that I had managed to only get them about 6ft off the ground. “I will just duck if I need to go by them,” I convinced myself. I went to my outside refrigerator and grabbed a cold Corona, sat down, put my feet on a low table, and nursed the bruises on my head whilst waiting patiently for a breeze. About three days later, a breeze finally did blow in. The “deep zen sound with a slight dis-chord” was suddenly transformed into something loud enough to raise the dead,no, Nooo, NOOOO!

Word of warning: just because something is new – it doesn’t mean you should position it close to you so you can see it or hear it!

I realized this was not yet over, I looked over with dread to my stepladder then down to my Post Oak at the end of my garden.

The chimes in their new home, they now sound just like I wanted them to. The deep bass sounds contrast with
a number of small, higher pitched wood and metal chimes surrounding the back deck. I now appreciate what
it takes to create a balance of sounds at various distances and pitches, the sign of a true gardening nerd!

Other Interesting things in the yard right now:

Burgundy Canna light show and the cool purples of Verbena in full bloom

Datura (Jimsonweed) caught early morning, dies to the ground in winter but returns each spring.

Night opening flowers get to 4-6″ wide.

” I told you we should have got a room in the four seasons, Gladdis.”

Stay Tuned for:

“The Pampas Chainsaw Massacre”

All material © 2009 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

“Fighting Lantana and Bermuda”

ESPatch Apr 30, 2008 3 comments

So here we go – my first blog entry!

My girlfriend (later to become my wife) and I moved into our first house about seven years ago in Austin, Texas. We were immediately drawn to its petrified long-leaf pine walls, high ceilings, and close proximity to downtown. The house had just been remodeled by two green architects so it was in really good shape – restored, using original materials, to its original Victorian look below. We had a couple of ‘energetic’ Springer Spaniels at the time so the back yard needed to be of a sufficient size – lucky for us it was – it even came with a towering Post Oak perfectly situated central at the rear of the lot. We bought the house – we moved in – we started painting – we finished painting – (we hated masking) – the usual.

And time passed.

And the lantana and ligustrums grew and grew.

Austin Texas – 1890

We believe this was the original owner.
And are those fields in the background?!

We quickly erected the obligatory chain-link fence and let out the dogs to explore their new domain, well at least part of it, 6th sense told them not to venture too deep into the darkened realm of Lantana. It rained one day and with the weeds and grass past my knees, I realized I needed a lawnmower,- quickly. And so my deep rooted (ahem) hatred for Bermuda grass was born.

And time passed.

And the lantanas and lugustrums grew and grew.

Now don’t misunderstand me – I don’t hate lantana (I do hate Bermuda) – in fact I have just recently planted some of the creeping variety, – there was just way too much of it, and all in the wrong place. Now for some reason my industrial “trimmer” style mower came off the factory line with a severe adversity to starting, and staying started! (not good when it is 100+ degrees outside). I began to realize that the merest touch of the plastic blade against the woody stem of a 4ft lantana was all that it took to obliterate it and send me spiraling into a heat indexed five minute, rope pulling, cursing frenzy. . . The lantana would simply have to go – only it turned out it wasn’t going to be that simple, in fact, it was going to be very hard indeed!

A Snails Pace – This went a lot slower than anticipated – about 3 Months slower – one stubborn tap-root at a time.

Anyone who has tried to dig up a mature lantana knows it is the job for a pick axe (or 2) and raw, primordial, aggression. I say primordial due to the seemingly endless grunts that are heard when trying to extract an intact 15ft tap-root (after your 5th extraction that’s how deep down they feel). We probably had 40 root-canals to go plus another 8 in the front of the house. We did initially try to transplant some of the plants in a more suitable location but they seemed not to like the transplant process one little bit – my experience with a lot of ‘woody’ shrubs incidentally. We eventually prevailed and celebrated the last Tap-root thrown onto the shrub pile – we were done! I thought naively – how difficult could the Bermuda Grass eradication be after this?

. . . . Quite difficult indeed as it turned out.

Oh and what is this on the Post Oak?…Staggering camouflage.

After clearing out all the lantana a rather strange thing happened. The space under the Post Oak suddenly became inhabitable, and I started to think about how this
terrain may be utilized. A rough plan was hatched which was centered around a water feature. The Bermuda Grass would just have to wait a little while longer – this was
way more exciting!

I found myself eager to work on something a little more creative than hacking out tubers. Initial layouts led to more refined plans that encompassed the back yard in its entirety. I became determined to carve the land roughly into the shape of the these sketches – subsequently an obsession was formed that remains with me today. I would spend the next five years making and learning from my mistakes, buying books and generally loitering around garden centers.

This blog will expose some of the funnier/scarier/and ridiculous stories of this adventure. I will also throw in some pictures and annotations as to what is currently cool, strange or bizarre in my yard. In fact here are some now. . . .

My Agave starting to bloom . . going up (about a 1ft a day!) detail of the flowers

Giant elephant ear growing fast! amazing form, tossing the caber!

More on the water feature saga and how it attacked me later!

sledge_hammer-0001.jpgfb0c220a-2563-4823-b582-f634649cf8b2Large-1

Stay Tuned for:

“I Used a Sledge Hammer on my Water Feature ”

All material © 2009 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

trees

“Wind Chimes and my Post Oak”

“The Pampas Chainsaw Massacre”

“Fighting Lantana and Bermuda”

“I Used a Sledge Hammer on my Water Feature ”

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