After walking back from dumping a bucket of water on one of my bamboos,
I shot a quick glance onto one of my Irises and saw this hugging horror scene.
I ran inside to retrieve my camera (which I usually always have on me) and cautiously re-approached the monster…
could it be a scorpion? surely not! in East austin?
I positioned my camera to full macro mode, put on my safari outfit, loaded my
blunderbuss with buckshot and feeling safer, investigated further.
Moving around to the side of the beast I could now hear its laboured
breathing intermingling with a blood curdling series of grunts and rattles.
I released the safety latch, and scoured the nearby terrain for a large
prodding stick. This specimen was one I intended to cage and bring back into
civilization alive, perhaps for a travelling side-show?
“I can understand why people would pay good money to see an
attractive, handsome giant ape such as myself in a side-show, but that alien
buggy thing?… Please”. (snort)
“Anyone know a good dentist”?
I turned my camera up side down and did a blind shot of the specimen. I looked at the shot in preview mode and immediately recoiled backwards into my asparagus ferns. I brushed myself down and glanced around nervously to see if someone had seen me.
The wizened wings, the lobster claws – it looked like an inch long giant flea!
At this point I arbitrarily recounted a story my father in law told me some time back, about a very pleasant conversation he had with a “Lobsterboy” at the State Fair in Dallas.
I digress.
“Lobster Boy” Fred Wilson was born
in Somerville, Massachussetts in
1866.
With the precision of a really bad surgeon I scrambled for my prodding stick and proceeded to start prodding the abomination, I prodded some more only to find that the creature that once inhabited this creature was gone!
Okay, okay so it is just the shell of an emerged cicada, but if it was 5ft long it would be terrifying! I need to stop watching so much sci-fi!
I caught this one in a local park. It actually flew around us, went way up in the air then dive bombed my wife’s foot…thwack, almost sending her into labor! This caused a chain reaction of high pitched sreaming, first from my wife, then from my 3 year old, who had no real idea why she was even screaming. I thought about joining in, but decided against it. Anyway I think this stunned the creature, allowing me to get this shot. The wing structure is amazing. (click then click again for a close-up)
And now for something completely different:
Mmmmm what is this now, blue paint that happens
to match my socks – what could this be? Queer eye
for the yard guy?
The panel that I was using to visualize my “Doorway to Nowhere” I decided
needed a sprucing, after all I anticipate a rather long time delay
to find an antique door that a) I like, and b) that I can afford. I will be living with this fence for some time, so I decided that it will be Azure blue in the interim, to remind me of the cooling trade winds of the Carribean. Ahhh!
I gave it a good sanding, cut off the rotten edge down one side, then gave it 4 coats of satin blue paint. I feel better already.
For once the 200 degree weather worked in my favor – by the time I had finished one coat, it was already dry at the other end!
Here it is hoisted into position, I went with the blue to contrast the weeping bamboo, and Palm Grass
…and all of this was going on to the repeated backdrop of:
“Daddy, I have caught a huge, huge, huge wiggly shark” (repeat 20 times)
Each time I had to put down my paintbrush to “take it off the hook”!!!
When I had finished my impromptu painting, I attacked the future home of my lavender bed with a pick axe. If lavender likes poor soil like the books say, it should thrive in here! The soil here better resembles the lunar surface (with less nutrients), it is also compacted and generally as much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle.
After discovering this I have now decided to remove the top few inches of “dirt” and cart it to my front yard to create some mounds before I cover it in decomposed granite and plant it up . . . ah the joy! I intend to do some serious drainage work in here, yes my pick axe and I are to be reaquainted once more. (I have not touched my pick axe since I attacked my water feature with it, quite some time ago. (see earlier post: http://east-side-patch.livejournal.com/2357.html))
Or was that my sledge hammer? or both?
Other Michael Phelps right now:
Look at how much these bad boys have grown! amazing.
And to end on a cooler note. If you squint your eyes, it could be frost, tell me it could!
Stay Tuned for:
“Pick Axel Rose”
All material © 2008 for east_side_patch. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
