East Side Patch

"Dr Strangeglove"

ESPatch Mar 28, 2009 0 comments

The first water lilies of the year have bloomed this past week, I have both hardy and tropical varieties in my pond.
This shot is the inside of my ‘Texas Dawn’ hardy lily.

My tropical variety is always a little behind.
All the lily gazing drew my attention to the rest
of the pond, and to the sudden overabundance
of this little oxygenating plant.

Elodia is a member of the frog’s-bit family Hydrocharitaceae. The plant
is also known as Canadian water pest, and as the name suggests the plant is very cold hardy, and can be quite aggressive once established. The plant very rarely blooms so I was very happy to capture this tiny flower on it’s tiny stalk. My fish have been struggling over these plants to get to rogue pieces of fish food, I decided it was time to do a little thinning. I actually lost a fish on this plant last year when it got a little too aggressive with it’s attempt to reach a tasty morsel.

“Don’t put me in the compost bin”! (tiny voice)
Looking like a scene from the movie The Secret of Roan Inish these piles of “pond seaweed”
cleared a good portion of the pond. The fish would not leave me alone as I was leaning full
stretch over the pond, they seemed happy at the new space that I was creating in their habitat.
All of this green goodness went straight into my compost bin, I am sure it is jam packed with
nutrients, and will be great when returned to the soil.

The pond looks really clear right now, but I am keeping a very close eye on the toad situation this year.
I do not want a repeat of this nightmare: http://east-side-patch.livejournal.com/11079.html
The Texas Gulf toads have already started their banshee screams on our warmer evenings.

Can you believe how fast the cat tails have grown back! It seems like yesterday that I cut them all the way back to their potted ground.

Now onto issues of a terrestrial nature. It has been a really odd week this week in the patch in terms of discovering very odd things, both up high and below ground. This first one looks like it has been staged, but I assure you it was not. I was inspecting my oldest Giant Timber bamboo at the far end of my yard.

I observed new growth emerging and then noticed these “cracks”. I looked around to see about 50% of all the culms had these fissures to a lesser or greater degree.

I can only hypothesize that it is
the movement and stresses
caused by strong wings that
has caused this?
This particular bamboo is more
exposed than my other ones.
Anyway I thought this was a little odd, but it paled in comparison to looking up and seeing this:

“Bamboo cookies”.
How did it get there? Why hadn’t something eaten it? Was someone throwing these as Frisbees?
What are the chances of it getting caught up in my bamboo?, the mind boggles. I walked away puzzled and started pulling on some of that annoying little ivy weed (you know the one that always snaps when you try to extract it) while I contemplated further the paratrooper cookie.

The only plant I detest as much as bermuda.

I grabbed a weedy vine that was a little thicker than the rest,
I do not know the name of this vine, but it has a very unique
aroma when you mess with it, kind of like neem, anyone
know what this is? I get lacerated every year pulling it out
of my pampas grasses. I pulled and the vine got thicker
and thicker, then, out of the ground popped this unearthly
plants entrails:

“Freeeeeedom”.

Look at this!
It looks like it should be in a modern art museum. Here is the stinky foliage to help with an ID. This vines innards and the mental image of the bamboo cookie, (which I could not seem to mentally shake), for some reason inspired me to start work on my agave stalk “instrument”. I was craving a little bit of sanity.

I went over to the side of the housewhere the “beanstalk” had been laid to rest. I hoisted it up and it was quite a mess, a roach haven, complete with clotted dead leaves, it was still host to thousands of dying pups. It is quite staggering how long these pups have survived on the dead stalk.

Here is the beanstalk blooming last year, shortly before I climbed it, stole a golden egg laying chicken from the resident giant in the castle at the top of it, and chopped it down in my hasty retreat. And here is the scary, matted zombie now. Brrrr… the stuff of nightmares. The people across the street looked on in disbelief as I wrestled it and finally propped it up against the side of my truck. The scene all looked very redneck, especially when I returned from my shed wielding my three foot machete. I proceeded to start hacking at it with a mad grin on my face, taking pictures every once in a while, the people across the street disappeared into the sanctuary of their home.

The machete made quick work of taking the pups off the host, can you believe how many
pups were still on this thing! I now have a mass agave grave next to my house!

The finished instrument sounds like a cross between an alpine horn, a didgeridoo and someone
just humming into an old agave stalk.
And now I promise I will never ever mention this again.

All the loquats have responded well to the recent spell of wet weather. Looks like lots of fruit this year.
I tried one yesterday and it was sweet…

It seems I was not the only one enjoying these fruits! I planted this pit, out of curiosity.

Other springing developments this week in the patch:

Pink evening primrose, Oenothera speciosa taken shortly after the rains. Pink evening primrose comes from the south-central United States. It is native to the rocky prairies and savannas of the lower Midwest. The wiggly bits that stick out (stamens) look like naan bread, click on the right image, they do!
I think I need to eat, immediately.

I caught this iridescent, unidentified chappy filling up his rodeo “chaps” with pollen on one of my four-nerve daisy plants. Look at his back legs (click then click again on the left image) he looks like Mr Tumnus from “The Chronicles of Narnia”.

I planted a whole bunch of California poppies in between a mass planting of artemisia ‘powis castle’ recently. I thought the orange would look good contrasted against the silver. I was suprised when this pale yellow bloom, the first one, popped up. I am not complaining, I just wonder if this one is a one-off or that they will all be the same color.

My ice plants are going ballistic, break a piece off, plant it, and within a week the tiny transplant will have formed it’s own bloom! amazing. Here is a face-like new bloom (with a green chin and a ridiculous hat) preparing to pop open. The plants on the left were tiny when I planted them. They have filled in really fast.

Staying with succulents for a moment, my “Botox Lady’s” hair is just starting
to “root” ahem. I think by the end of this year she may have a full head of “succulent”
hair. Perhaps then she will stop complaining every time I walk past her.

Stargazer lily in my Hell-Strip.

I have my first mexican sage bloom this week (center)

China berry blooms, they smell really good but the blooms and the berries
will send you, or your pets, straight to the hospital, if ingested.

Gerbera daisy after the rains.

My middle bed is filling in pretty fast with the excellent growing weather we have been having.

Why Dr Strange(g)love?

I bought these yesterday! “They just don’t make them like they used to in my day ESP”…
…damned Waltons.

Stay Tuned For:
“Revenge of the Turds”
All material © 2009 for east_side_patch. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

"Pushing up the Daisies"

ESPatch Mar 16, 2009 0 comments

The weather in the patch of late has been almost perfect (in Texas terms). Warm, sunny, blue-sky days with just the slightest hint of coolness in the breeze, and pleasant, mosquito free (well almost) nights. The evenings are really scented right now from the jasmine vine at the side of my property.
Ahh, if only the temperatures would remain as moderate as they are right now.

Here is my star jasmine, actually I was wrong, here is my Pink jasmine, or Winter Jasmine
Jasminum polyanthum.
(Thank you for the correction Jenny).

…can you spot the sphinx moth, it is not easy.
The leaves of the plants in the jasmine family are used to brew tonic teas and herbal remedies in China. Research indicates that the plant does indeed contain chemical enzymes that function as anti-inflammatories. The flowers of the plant are also used to create jasmine essential oil, they are gathered at night because the odour of jasmine is more powerful after dark. The oil is so expensive because it takes…

“One million flowers”
to produce a small amount of oil.

Moving on to this little brick oven-baked
strip of bermuda grass infested heaven.

Before and after.
Almost done. Sage pruned up, granite layed down, at the property I have been working on.
The “Hell Strip” now requires some feather grass to soften the edges and fill in the planting and perhaps a shasta, or four nerve daisy or five, to add some low maintenance color?

Back at the patch there was also a line of tiny feather grasses about to go into their own low nutrient, decomposed granite home. The mature grasses around the perimeter of the circular bed were planted around this time last year. I am about to dig these up and divide them, I will cut the divisions back to almost the same height as the new ones.

Moving on to some other parts of the patch:

The itchy “Eye of Sauron” cast it’s critical gaze onto
this area of the ESP this past week:

This patch of land has been irritating me for quite long enough. It was the first area in the entire yard I started planting and doing some “improvements” in, over time it has ended up a bit of a hodge podge of living and man-made things. There were bits of fences with lattice nailed to them, old cedar carcasses, and containers randomly strewn around the area buried in lots and lots of ivy. There was even a grumpy old iris crammed up like a criminal, face pushing against a fence (that served no purpose), screaming profanities!

This all needed to go, a clean slate, a fresh start etc.

The fence and lattice monstrosity
was the first thing to come out,
lucky for me I had not cemented
the posts into the ground, they were out
in seconds. I felt better already.

I noticed I had a couple of what I thought were small elephant-ears planted in here that needed to be transplanted. I dug down a little and was amazed to find this massive screaming Taro root (corm).
The plant above the large bulb has rarely got above a few feet in height. Very odd indeed!

I also pulled up a few logs out of the area. This one looked like it had some japanese letters carved into it.
There has been some serious boring going on in here, (no funny comments).

Here is a cedar carcass that was completely covered in ivy.
This one I immediately found a new home for.
I will use this as a planter for some small succulent plants.

I was making good progress, then, through a pile of dead leaves,
I saw an edge of black plastic and remembered exactly
what was buried in here.

No, it was not Spock’s coffin.

It was a large, black, home depot “pond” that I had submerged many years ago as an ill-fated attempt at a bog garden. Over time the whole area went into neglect, the flagstones got covered up with leaves, and eventually everything went out of sight and subsequently out of mind.
Today was to be extraction day.
I had dug it in, now I will dig it out, this time it is destined for the spring bulk pick up (unless that is, anyone wants it)? I will throw in a couple of braces of agaves, what? :-)

Here is the beached whale finally hoisted up onto the pine-bark beach.
There were many critters living under the “pond” that I don’t care to mention (shudders), but one I will …

m m must get out!
Geckos, lots of them, they had a real hard time getting out of the steep incline with loose soil.
I gave them all a “legs-up” with the tip of my shovel, in defense, one unfortunately dropped it’s tail, a process called autotomy. A mechanism I am happy we do not share. Can you imagine?
Geckos are small to average sized lizards belonging to the family Gekkonidae which are found in warm climates throughout the world. Geckos are unique among lizards in their vocalizations, making chirping sounds in social interactions with other geckos. The name gecko actually stems from the Indonesian work gekok, imitative of its cry.

Last year a gecko, partly preserved in amber for 100 million years, was the oldest fossilized gecko ever found. The amber, began its existence as tree sap, in which the lizard was apparently caught. The find was at least 40 million years older than the oldest known gecko fossil,shedding additional light on the evolution and history of these ancient lizards that tickled the feet of giant dinosaurs. Ironically the only part of this gecko that was preserved was it’s foot.

looking like more screaming mandrake roots, these divisions came from the two plants that were still living in the pond. I must have got twenty plants out of these original two! I am not sure what they are and for now they are dispersed in my Hoja Santa bed.

Here is the area all cleaned up. The clean up also created yet another new pile of leaves that will be added to the compost bins as needed. More on this area in future posts.

Bloomers this week:

“Aw, stop messing about”!

These are the rather elaborate blooms on my Purple-leaf Sand Cherry right now
Prunus x cistena

Small, pinkish, fragrant flowers are followed by blackish purple summer fruits on this slow-growing, multibranched shrub. Foliage is reddish purple. Sand Cherry can reach 6 to 10 feet tall and 3 to 5 feet wide (if you are lucky). If the growth rate on mine is any measure, this will take a very, very long time. Based on my previous post “Bamboo Aliens.”
The image of the “hatchling” has caused
a continuous stream of inquisitive intergalactic travelers
teleporting to the patch this last week.
This cosmonauts “old school” technology really surprised me.

Making a fragrance cocktail with the pink jasmine this year is my small but potent Satsuma tree. The blooms on this tree make your mouth water and it is crammed with honey bees! The blooms on this little tree promise more than the singular (albeit very tasty) fruit it managed to squeeze out last year. http://east-side-patch.livejournal.com/14147.html
Fingers crossed for more this year.
Imagine a full-sun “Hell-Strip” planted up with three of these? mmmm, now that would be different.

Verbena in full-on sprawl mode and bloom. I like the way the form mimicks the Texas holey rocks. The plant fills in every nook and cranny between rocks.

It always amazes me when these little succulent rosettes send up these relatively
enormous flower spikes, this one looking particularly shrimp-like.

Here is another flower spike in the same bed. This one has an interesting
white flower color and shape.

As I was walking away from my round succulent bed I caught a slight
movement in the corner of my eye. I followed this grasshopper for a while
before I managed to obtain these shots. This guy was extremely hard to spot,
having virtually no contrast in it’s body and head coloration. I think this is
brown-spotted range grasshopper (Psoloessa delicatula).