"Botanical Quack"

ESPatch Jun 9, 2009 0 comments

“Neo, we have a problem.
The sentinels have been deployed
over at the ESP”.
“Trinity, those are old passion vine flowers.”
“Still, the oracle told me this would happen Neo”

My front porch is full of these sentinels that have shriveled
and dropped off my red passion vine.

From riches to rags.

The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long.
And you have burned so very very brightly.
Blade Runner.

This zinnia simply just burned,

it fried to a crisp in one day!

On a lighter note…

Who said this is a drought lovingplant. This one has had a lot of water over the course of the last few weeks as I have tried to breathe life into my adjacent cyprus tree (which was dead and now is alive) with a constant drip feed of water from my leaking hosepipe. (I must say the best product I have had for quite some time) … It leaks at just the right rate!

I have never had a blackfoot
daisy look as healthy,
it is spilling halfway across the sidewalk.

Somebody who is not looking quite as chipper is…
MEDIC!!!

“No! Whatever you do, do not stick that th e..r…Arooooo”!

“Angels and ministers of grace,
defend us…is his face is collapsing?”

Oh no, what have I done!
What started initially as a slight grimace has tragically turned into …
.

(minus the teeth) – I have created my very own frankenstein.

Medical. Diary Entry….June12, 2009:
Subject: “Cactus man”
DOB: May10, 2005
Prognosis: Premature Aging, facial warts,
and a general softening of the cranium.

Picture of patient 487633-A

Physician’s Private Notes:
“I fear I may have been a little too “aggressive”
with my initial surgical procedure. The subject
appears to have a softening of the upper dermis.
Sparse cell clusters correspond to irregularly
aggregated and sparse cells, usually irregular
in morphology and refractivity confined within
a darker well-demarcated area, or,

my cactus’s skull appears to be rotting”! Ahhhhhhhh!

Additional:
The patient continues to drift in and out of
cacti consciousness.
If he continues to scare members of my family, with his
disturbing facial expressions I fear more drastic measures
may have to be undertaken, earlier than I originally anticipated.

Moving on…

Variegated shell ginger Alpinia zerumbet ‘variegata’
I recently wandered past this patch of shell ginger like I have
done thousands of times, when these blooms caught my eye. My gingers
have never bloomed before! My camera was out of my pocket faster than
Billy the Kid drawing his gun.

“Faster, huh? ESP.” Anyone old enough to remember this one?

The flowers are white, tipped in pink,
and borne in long pendant arches.
This ginger is “supposed” to flower all
summer after the second year.
Mine are three years old.

The individual flowers are reminiscent of small seashells, which
accounts for the common name “shell ginger”…Now I get it! Duh!
They really do. I also think they look like lychees,
what do you think?

“Mmmmmm………………Lychees”!

I would never have anticipated such a tropical, exotic bloom.
To think I just bought these plants for their foliage…

Prince Sago or Emperor Sago Cycas taitungensis
(I hope I have this ID right!) I know it is not a Cycas revoluta (King Sago),
It also has a much more open crown…very feather like.

Cycads, Cycadaceae
are descendants of a very ancient group of
early seed-bearing plants that appeared
on the earth millions of years ago. Cycads
were at their prime during the Jurassic period
where they coexisted with dinosaurs and Jeff
Goldblum, they covered vast areas of the
earth’s surface…imagine that!
Really bad for picnics at the time.

It looked like Jurassic Park here at patch the other night, a very tornadic
weather front hit us hard and brought with it some redneck tub
and bucket fillin’, well needed, water! (And some good lightning).
Temperatures are up to nearly a hundred again today.
I caught a few little creatures drying off from the drenching…