ESPatch

“Across the Gulf”

ESPatch Jun 27, 2011 14 comments

Our car bulged at the seams…

buckets and rods were at the ready, and so were we.

I was very excited at the prospect of replacing the mist from my misters

with real surf spray,

yes, the Levwold’s were finally going on a vacation which was a really good thing,

as I believe if we had not left when we did this angry mocking bird would have pecked us to death – look at that face. This bird was a menace, swooping at me and Kumo causing him to continuously throw nervous glances over his shoulder to the sky, and me to flail my arms frantically above my “tucked-in” head every time it dive bombed me. This bird was ruining our outdoor activities, no more paddling pool, no more sitting out looking at the fish for fear of the terror that would reign down on us from the sky.

Yes, it was definitely time for a holiday. I informed the Naboo of our travel dates, polished the cactus man’s monocle, and left a fresh box of napkins next to the Botox Lady.

We were finally off.

In apparently more ways then one…it was a very early start after all.

Some hours later we were driving through the very martian looking environment of South Padre Island on the Texas gulf coast. Time during the journey was measured in “Harry Potters”…“Stop asking! We have been traveling one and a half Potters, we have two more Harry’s to go…now stop asking!” 15 minutes later: “Has it been two Harry Potters yet?” ….oh for Slytherins sake!.

A chunk of this pristine coastline a little north of south Padre is currently all for sale for future development, a little depressing.

On arrival, the moisture filled winds and warm sea waters washed the journey behind us in no time at all. It was the first time our halflings have ever witnessed the ocean so there was a lot of excitement (and high pitched squeals) filling the salty air.

I thought she would be obsessed with finding sea-shells, but she found something much better in addition, something alive and shimmering with all the colors of the spectrum, creatures that would bury themselves in the sand seconds after a wave sucked back out into the ocean. Oh yes, this quickly became a high-intensity hunting activity,

and she loved it. She had discovered these colorful jewels of the ocean, and became thoroughly obsessed collecting them with eager fingers. These Coquina Clams are small members of the clam species who live in the tidal zone of many of our beaches. The southern Atlantic Coquina lives from Virginia south into the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. In good habitats of clean water and sand, these clams will multiply and become plentiful indicating a healthy beach. The tiny clams move up and down the beach with the movement of the tide. The water gives them a lift, first up the beach and then back down. When they find the spot they are looking for, they quickly bury themselves in the sand.

Every evening our third floor apartment became a laughing gull feeding frenzy.

As bread and crackers were thrown high into the heavens.

This was all well and good until the droppings began, driving us once again cowering indoors.

We spent a lot of time up there on our balcony observing cloud formations,

orbiting satellites,

and lines of pelicans that flew by every day. The island is home to nearly half of all bird species documented in North America.

Padre Island is the second largest island by area in the US after Long Island, and it is basically a sand bar that over the years got very large. The island has been known by several names, with Padre Island being only the most recent. It has also been known as “la Isla Blanca” (White Island)

and “Isla de los Malaguitas” (Karankawa).

The first permanent settlement on the island was located on the island’s southern tip. This area was established around 1804 by a Spanish priest, Padre Nicolas Balli, after whom the island is named. Prior to then, the only people known to have inhabited or visited the island were nomadic hunter-gatherers, Native Americans, Spanish troops, and the survivors of three shipwrecks on the island’s shore in 1554.

The Island is also home to the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, the most endangered sea turtle species in the world, which nests on the beach from late April through mid-July. I did not get a shot of a turtle so you will have to settle for this comical crab,

this Auger,

and this baby Portuguese Man o’ war jelly fish that washed up on the beach. This creature is actually not a jellyfish but a siphonophore which differ from jellyfish in that they are not actually a single creature, but a colonial organism made up of many minute individuals called zooids.

Each of these zooids is highly-specialized and, although structurally similar to other solitary animals, are attached to each other and physiologically integrated to the extent that they are incapable of independent survival. Sound familiar?

Moving zooidingly along:

After a rather nervous escapade with a man and his parrots we popped into the Sea = Life Center in the background where I came face to face with a creature I had no idea even existed.

A “walking” batfish. These fish are found in the gulf and are so named because they are flat and can use their stout, arm-like fins to shamble along the seafloor with a stilted gait, reminiscent of a walking bat. Brrr, brrr and more brrr, (right leg immediately starts some imitating involuntary bat-like walking gestures). The gills are just visible behind its “legs”.

The touch tanks filled with starfish, hermit crabs and many other creatures were an instant hit.

Staying on the subject of fish for a moment, we naturally had to try our luck down on one of the piers at nearby Port Isabel. We had an unorthodox set of fishing equipment that ranged from Sponge Bob and Tinkerbell fishing rods and me wielding a large and unruly surf casting rod, oh yes, how the locals looked at the Levwolds with “interest”.

I baited up Sponge Bob first, fitting a float to the line that weighed about as much as this tiny rod could handle. I dropped it over the edge and pulled some line out. Ten unbelievable seconds later my youngest pulled out a spotted sea trout (with just a little help).

And as fast as Tinkerbell’s bait was lowered into the water she also was into a fish, this time a young yellowfin tuna,

and then another spotted trout.

I caught one more trout, a porcupine fish (that I had no idea what to do with) and a hardhead catfish, all in a couple of hours. All fish were safely released and all grins were wide as we strutted proudly down the pier past the other fishermen with the more “conventional” equipment.

As a weather disturbance moved into the Gulf, we decided to make the trip to Brownsville, home to the Gladys Porter Zoo http://gpz.org/, and what a great zoo this is, well worth the visit should you be in the area. We got our maps, the sky thickened,

we saw giraffes and it started to grow dark,

we saw Jurassic palms and it started to drizzle.

By the time we exited this enclosed exotic wild foul exhibit…

Well, need I say more.

The upside to these downpours was that we almost had the entire zoo to ourselves, it was like our own private tour around the park…just like the Griswolds at Walley World.

One final sandcastle,

and it was time to try and jam our belongings, buckets of shells and ridiculous surf shop souvenirs back into our car.

Three Harry Potters later and a substantial amount of sunburn scratching and we were home,

back to the puppy that they were both missing terribly.

Me?

I exited the car with a few groans then immediately looked around frantically for the mocking bird.

I know how to relax.

Stay Tuned for:

“Not So Fun in the Sun”

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

“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.

ESPatch

“Across the Gulf”

“Not So Fun in the Sun”

“Oh Yucca!”

Argiope aurantia

“Across the Gulf”

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