Yucca

“Oh Yucca!”

ESPatch Jun 11, 2011 11 comments

Oh yucca indeed.

I have been watching one of my soft leaf yuccas turn paler and paler recently. At first I thought it was due to the drought (though I thought this very much out of character with this tough plant). I gave it a little more of the wet stuff but it continued to decline. I decided to dig it out and as I suspected (but was in complete denial about), found the Nazgul had struck once again in the Patch. In fact, not just one of them had been deep mining this time, but three of the retched dark creatures.

“Blinded by their greed, they took them without question, one by one falling into shadow. They will never stop hunting your specimen plants.”

This takes the snout nose weevil’s death count up to three mature Agave americana and this yucca so far this year and has forced me to go into a diatomaceous earth regimen around all my remaining yuccas in an attempt to keep these pests away…time will tell. If this fails I will move onto much stronger methods of control.

I am concerned presently not only with the evil weevil but also this:

Just how much contact does she have with the Naboo when I am away, or not looking? She has begun creating these tribal tortilla “masks” in a matter of seconds of sitting down in a restaurant, and I must say, she is getting rather adept at constructing them. Although she is enrolled in a dual language program, I am pretty sure that the rapid mouth clicks she now practices over dinner are not part of the regular AISD curriculum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c246fZ-7z1w&feature=player_embedded

And even stranger is that Kumo seems to understand and interpret these clicks and clacks as commands. Here he is directing an impending aeronautic turn (his second job).

Talking of masks…

The wolf-like head markings on this young Black and Yellow Argiope

Argiope aurantia

spider, gives potential predators the illusion of a much larger creature.

Here is a close-up of the adult:

I am always happy to see these beneficial spiders around as they seem to be less and less prevalent around the Patch.

The furnace-like Texas winds continue to take their toll in the Patch, frying my Japanese maple and this pepper to a crackling crisp even before summer officially begins on Tuesday.

In stark contrast, this stock tank filled with King Tut Papyrus and various canna lilies relish the heat. A great combination so long as the planter is kept moist. I fill this tank up so that there is an inch of water above the soil level, this keeps it very happy for a couple of weeks, until the next top-up.

Moving on to a suburban front garden make-over:

This one felt a little like:

With the brunt of the work being implemented in a couple of days, followed by a lot of:

and…

Ahhing. “Its that tendon again isn’t it George? I told you not to over-do things.”

Here is where it started…St Augustine grass in decline due to insufficient light from a spectacular front garden tree.

The planting and foundation bed was just too small to add any real presence to this area, everything needed a little help and punctuating definition. The first thing to go was that plastic edging, naturally.

Here is the initial design visualization that I presented to the client. The back-bone of the plan was very well received but the plant selection I proposed needed some tweaking with some client preferred plant selections. Also instead of referencing the dark gray of the trim and roof, it was decided that the grey flagstone should be replaced with a paler color to reference the house color. Moss boulders were substituted for limestone in the final scheme.

Raw materials arrived, in parallel to the

the foundation bed-enlargement, prep work, soil amendment and total grass eradication activities.

The final result:

The front garden now blends out from the house – an aesthetic extension that anchors the home with the decorative flagstone that draws attention and the eye around the focal front tree. The corner front bed receives more sunlight and is planted up with purple fountain grasses and a knockout rose.

Limestone boulders of varying scale (one huge one, naturally) now line the larger house foundation bed and are partially buried to offer an embedded, naturalized look. The colors of the boulders work well against the white of the house and the tan of the granite. The ornamental red urn pops out some warmth and vertical stature to the scene. Pockets of fox-tail ferns will spread like miniature fir woodlands over time, filling in the designated areas.

Once these plants get established most of the sprinklers in this front garden will be permanently turned off, reducing the homeowners water bills.

Inspirational images this week:

Now these trees are tough, just look at that terrain…and to think I moaned about what lurked under the ground at Mt Bonnell! This scene looks like a set from:

The Dragon Tree is related to Agave and Yucca and it is most unusual with its mushroom-like form. It is a rare subtropical tree that is endemic to Canary Islands, Madeira & Cape Verde, where only a few specimens can be found growing naturally on the islands of Tenerife and La Palma in dry bush at the low elevations of the islands’ rocky mountain ranges. Many ancient examples are 20 to 30 feet tall and believed to be up to a thousand years old.

Also known, as the Dragon’s Blood Tree because when the trunk or branch is cut or scarred it produces red sap that resembles blood.

This tree is related to Ladon, an ancient dragon with a hundred heads, each of which spoke in a different voice.

The natives of the Canary Islands harvested the resin of these trees for mummification. They made shields of its bark and colored their hair red with its leaves. The odd branch formations resemble the hundred heads of the dragon. Fossils of this tree have been found in southern France. During the Spanish Conquest, dragon trees were over-harvested; nowadays they are very scarce in their native areas and are protected.

Because of its various medicinal and magical properties, it was sought by various cultures around the Mediterranean, Europe and Africa. Today the Dragon’s Blood is still in use to produce a hard, shiny furniture polish. There is something very otherworldly about these trees and it is hardly surprising to learn that the dragon’s blood resin has been held in high regard by sorcerers and alchemists of old.

Stay Tuned for:

“Across the Gulf”

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

“The Emperor’s New Tools”

ESPatch May 16, 2011 10 comments

Oh yes, it was time to replenish my pruning tools with some sharp fresh blood, in this case a couple of pairs of brand spanking new Felco secateurs, courtesy of Hill Country Gardens. I even splashed out on a new pair of gloves! I go through gloves faster then the snout weevil goes through my agaves and generally buy a new pair at the start of each install (they usually only last about that long) we will see how these hold up. Oh yes the pruners…the smell of new forged steel and fresh oil.

I was hunched over my new UPS delivery in my living room, inhaling deeply and rotating the new blades like Gollum would his ring. I whispered under my breath…“my preciouses”, and flicked the unlock mechanism, my wife caught me in the act and asked what on earth I was doing?

I love new tools almost as much as new electronic devices (which have an even better aroma), a loud nostril inhale always follows the automatic door opening when I enter Best Buy.

I wasted no time trying out my new implements, the first heirloom tomato of the year seemed like fair game. While my head was buried deep inside my tomato plants I had the distinct impression that I was being watched.

“No-one would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century, that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own. That as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they observed and studied.

With infinite complacency men went to and fro about the globe, confident of their empire over this world.

Yet, across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely drew their plans against us”.

Ceriagrion aeruginosum

Wake Up!

They are also known as Big Red Damselflies, and although they are bright red, they are also very hard to spot. Damselflies are predators, they will eat nearly any other insect and are especially adept at picking aphids off plants, they are our garden friends…in stark contrast to this chap:

who showed up in my last remaining pampas grass this week,

knifes, forks and jaws at the ready.

The bee mimicking hoverflies are once again protecting their most prized bounty, this Barbados cherry.

They get so annoyed and aggressive when I am around this plant, but I know they are the con-men of the insect world, the charlatans, always threatening to sting but having no stingers to deliver the punch. This particular one is a carpenter bee as it turns out… (thanks for the post post positive ID meredee).

Evergreen wisteria,

Millettia reticulata

is forming blooms, and lots of them. This is one of my favorite vines so naturally I have three of them in different places all over the Patch. Give it plenty of room though, it will get quite large and very heavy, though it is not invasive…highly recommended.

Here is the vine looming over two trellises that my bench is anchored to.

Echinacea and Madame Ganna Walska water lilies are also entering their prime this week.

I decided this stand of Mexican weeping bamboo needed some additional recognition for attaining such a substantial diameter. This semi-circular pattern of three different brick sizes worked out a treat, laid directly into decomposed granite. I had no idea what I was going to do when I started this, but the final free-form result works to draw attention to this specimen plant.

My helper did a great job of handing me the bricks from the wheelbarrow, this made a huge difference, not having to do a hundred squats back and forth. The sabal major on the right will require another rainbow arc (which will ultimately join this one) as it matures.

And to finish…some Patch oddities this week:

Can you spot the green lynx spider?

Fall Aster, in May?

A stunted hollyhock, this has to be smallest ever.

The magenta blood vessels on these chard leaves were amazing, these shots came from Sheryl Williams’ vegetable garden who was recently featured on the Inside Austin Gardens Tour

Here is her blog:

http://yardfanatic.blogspot.com/

Mount Bonnell, ESP Design Install…part two:

Front of house / Patio

The fenced in courtyard has a magnificent Mediterranean fan palm growing in it, one of the largest I have seen…so you can grow them in Austin! The before image (left) was a rather random affair, lots of mediums doing visual battle with each other, and seemingly haphazard plantings of ornamental grasses in a bed of turfallo grass that was weak and full of weeds. The visualization on the right adds a bit of punch to the scene. I decided to replace the grass with Tejas black shingle to deepen the contrast and to reference the color of the wrought iron work on the enclosed patio. The focal point at this stage was a proposed bubble fountain that later became a planter. I went for a stand of soft leaf yucca to contrast the grasses that remained.

Here is the final result: The planter is populated by a baby Agave parryi huachucensis and is surrounded by accenting grey flagstone.

The white limestone rocks inside the enclosed patio area I also replaced with the Tejas black shingle to add further visual continuity through the scene to the house.

And some shots of the new Hell-strip: