“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.

“The Tent in the Woods”

ESPatch Nov 20, 2012 6 comments

Artemesia and copper canyon daisy,

Tagetes lemmonii

Sara and John Lemmon-camping on Mt Lemmon

John Gill Lemmon, a self-educated botanist, respectfully called the “professor” and his wife Sara collected Copper Canyon Daisy in southeastern Arizona sometime in the early 1880s. The descendants of these plants were then introduced into the nursery trade.

Sara and John met in 1876 at a lecture he gave in Santa Barbara, California. A keen botanist herself they were married four years later and, as you do, embarked on a “botanical wedding trip” to Arizona in 1881, a part of the world at that time very few botanists had visited.

Photo: Wikipedia

If running around collecting and cataloging plants was not enough, they also climbed to the peak of the mountain they christened Mount Lemmon, after Sara, the first European-descended woman to make the ascent.

Sarah was also responsible for the designation of the California Poppy as the state flower (1903), (another plant that pairs well with artemesia).

Both the Lemmon and Plummer surnames are used in the scientific names of many Arizona plants discovered by this prolific husband-and-wife team.

Red Admiral

Vanessa atalanta

These butterflies seem particularly fond of the copper canyon daisies. This species over-winters in southern Texas. They have descended in large numbers this week in the Patch, on the final stretch of their migration.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/05/the_great_butterfly_migration.html

The pungent foliage of the copper canyon daisy is either liked (citrus-like, anise – licorice tones etc) or disliked

by humans, but it sure does a good job of deterring foraging deer from eating it…

…Jenny.

Moving along:

Short-lived mist flower blooms are now turning brown,

creating their unique “fluffy-cloud” aesthetic as they float through this basket grass in my front garden.

Basket grass takes a while to mature but when established it requires nothing, and I mean nothing, no water, no cutting back in the winter – it just looks steel-blue-good all year round. The only maintenance required is to cut back the occasional cream-colored bloom stalk at the base when they brown.

Mexican bush sage keeps on going with its

purple fuzzy flower spikes. Mine are now so leggy I have almost got two separate plants courtesy of the new central growth.

I cannot bring myself to cut it back quite yet as the bees are still swarming the old growth / flowers.

I think I can safely say that this red passion vine is doing quite well on my front porch:

Finally:

Celosia ranks up there with the mist flowers for attracting a wide variety of insects.

It will soon be time to bribe and set small pink stained fingers to work gathering seeds. The price unfortunately goes up with each passing year.

Inspirational image of the week:

Stay Tuned for:

“Biddy from Sligo”

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

utube

“Biddy from Sligo”

Justicia brandegeana

“Jings, Crivvens, Help ma Boab”

“The Tent in the Woods”

Tagetes lemmonii

Vanessa atalanta

“Biddy from Sligo”

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