Yellow Bells

“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.

“The Wheels of Change”

ESPatch Nov 14, 2011 6 comments

“I Think I Jinxed Myself” should perhaps be a more fitting title for this particular post! Little did I know when I titled this post last week that I would a) wake up to a flat tire on my trusty steed b) end up having to buy a “new” tire c) find out a few hours later that the “new” tire also had a hole in it, and d) have to replace the “new” tire with another new “new” tire.

“The Wheels of Change” indeed.

Things are changing finally in Central Texas, nighttime temperatures are now occasionally dipping, something

my opuntia tree seems to be enjoying.

I have been hacking at this one’s lower limbs for quite some time to get it shaped up into a more vertical stature…

…it bares the cauterized war wounds of many an ancient battle with my trusty hook saw.

It does not matter how much you hack at this little asparagus fern, (which, like a lot of others, is not actually a true fern)

Asparagus setaceus / Asparagus plumosus

or Plumosa Fern

it always comes back.

Don’t be fooled by this fern’s delicate disposition, it is as hard as nails and tolerates anything the Texas weather throws at it. You can let it creep around other plants like I now do to offer contrast to broader leaf plants like this burgundy canna lily, (a pairing that works very well together) or you can be a little more ambitious with it as I was some years ago…

I planted two tiny plants against these bamboo poles, a couple of years later they resembled conifers. The plant will grow in full sun to shade and it will spread, so watch out where you plant it. It is also toxic and has thorns but other than that I personally like it. It would work really well if left to its own devices to climb over ornamental gates etc.
The onset of all my fragrant mist flowers and my

Barbados cherry blooming has created an eruption of these tiny sryphid flies in the Patch:

Allograpta obliqua

These aphid consuming, beneficial little hover flies are all over the place at the moment,

Also still blooming are the fall asters,

yellowbells,

and this shiny little ice plant that receded to almost nothing this summer but is quickly returning from between the rocks.

Moving On:

Remember my flatulent stock tank that burped and threw up on me last March? My halflings affectionately refer to this particular tank as “the poop-pond” due to it having Dillo Dirt in it.

I planted it up with small clumps of horsetail reed and threw in a couple of dwarf papyrus for good measure and said “let the battle begin”.

Eight months later and it has exploded, filling the entire tank. I would say this battle is well under way with perhaps the dwarf papyrus having the slight advantage.
Finally…

a front make-over:

Large sweeping pathways were created around both sides of this house for functional access and to visually draw attention to, and emphasize the grand entryway of the property.

Lots of Asiatic jasmine ground cover was removed (stay calm, stay calm, deep breaths, (subtle knee murmur)) along with the existing shrubbery that was getting rather long in the tooth.

In its place came a weed suppressed base of grey Tejas black gravel and a fresh new planting scheme, heavy on the prostate rosemary to cascade over the elevated retainer wall, the intent being something like this:

A mass-planting of bamboo muhly softens the edges of the walkway and more burgundy cannas are used in sunken stock tanks next to the entryway to pick up on the house trim color.

Stay Tuned for:

“Poking around the Pokeweed”

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