“Poppy Patch”

ESPatch Apr 7, 2010 13 comments

Poppies are popping at the front of the patch.

Some are so dense I have had to thin them out to allow light to reach my Gaura lindheimeri (whirling butterfly) plants, that were in danger of being engulfed by the waxy red explosion.

Ripping at the seams!

“The poppies are really putting on a good show this year, look Ben.”

“Don’t you think I can see them with these eyes of mine Penelope?”

Everything is mounding up pretty well in the ESPatch this spring…the burgundy cannas are on the move and the Mexican feather grass is already in its prime, they are already full of seed pinnacles…

“Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, But grass is immortal.” – John J. Ingalls

…they looked spectacular the other day with the wind ripping through them,

and then the setting sun igniting them.

The spring stragglers are my Barbados cherry that is slowly greening up (center left) and my Mexican lime tree that so far only has two small green sprigs on it’s lower trunk.

My artemisia is also filling in quite nicely, that is the greener variegated variety (front right) that I am keeping a close eye on…it has spread significantly since I first planted it, but for now I will let it run wild up the slope.

“We’ll build dwarf palmetto spears, twice the length of a Naboo man…Hold, Hold, Here they come lads, Hold, HOLD, Here come the snails, HOLD.”

“Don’t be ridiculous William”.

I do not think I have ever seen so many snails in the ESP!

The inland sea oats have risen at an alarming rate…

…I have been spreading my sea oats all around the patch for a number of years now.

Is he serious Barb…Nicky…Margene?

While we are on the topic…

When I opened my compost bin today I was emphatically greeted by a cloud of these, they were tiny, in fact when I first leaned in to take a look I thought it was only one insect. I was shocked to find these “push-me-pull-you” escapades going on with almost all of them…soldier flies gone wild!

Hermetia illucens Linnaeus

Black soldier fly

Moving on…

Why the faces?

Well, I was weeding with my youngest hobbit, who has a hard time discerning what is a plant and what is a weed, when I glanced over and saw this little morsel of fun…

Oh yes, I had to do it, I don’t know why, I never seem to learn, a word of advice…do not prod the unknown! From a distance it looked like it had a “shell” of sorts on the outside, but oh-no how wrong I was. My finger sunk into the martian spore like it was a marshmallow…shocked I retracted my finger (which now had a glob of the martian-mallow stuck to the end of it)…and yes, you all know what was to happen next.

“No don’t do it, don’t even think about it!”

Ahh, but I was about to, and I did, and I immediately regretted it, yes, as if my last post was a prequel to my current predicament, I made a really bad choice and smelled my own finger. Oh like you wouldn’t! Oh you wouldn’t?

From my kneeling position my body went into an irreversible backward arc.

I narrowly avoided taking my hobbit along with me in the recoil.

My over the top reaction naturally captured his full attention, he loved it. I ewwed, he ewwed, the adjacent Botox lady ewwed,

Photo from: “The Pygmies Plight”, Smithsonian.

And a Naboo member prodded the spore with a rather small stick.

He thought the stinky martian-mallow was the best and hunkered down over it for a front row seat waiting to see what would happen next. And apparently he wasn’t disappointed.

He let out a fit of squeals and giggles as I “smeared” the spore like rotten margarine with a piece of pine-bark.

The smell?…well look at this thing, I will spare you a detailed graphic description.

Something a little more refreshing to cleanse the pallet…

Santolina chamaecyparissus

A small flowering plant native to the Mediterranean area (flowers are yellow and daisy like), santolina and artemesia are two silver plants that hold up well in our Texas summers, though in my experience santolina is just a little more fickle. I still have to have it dotted around. Unlike artemesia it grows very slowly, at least it does in the Patch. How does it grow for you?

Ivy thicket, pruned up agave and an attractive hose! I am trying to establish three more ivy beds like this under the deep shade of my large Post Oak tree, it will take a few more years.

This Threadleaf ragwort or (and I hope I have this right)…

Senecio flaccidus

is a native of the southwestern great plains of North America, and a member of the daisy family. I have three of these and they all look like this right now, a great sprawling plant when planted up against boulders. It has a faint copper canyon daisy aroma.

Stay Tuned for:

“Lady-bug-Gaga”

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“Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop” – Garden Benches

ESPatch Apr 3, 2010 21 comments

“Smell my finger”…

Err…”No Thanks”!

I would rather smell this, thank you very much! The aroma from my

Pittosporum tobira ‘Variegata’

or more commonly known mock orange, is hard to put into words. It is filling the entire back quarter of the patch with the most amazing scent right now, in fact, I am making fake journeys and excuses to go back there just to catch another whiff of it.

The sweet orange blossom aroma from this shrub / small tree will perfume a garden with an aroma that will last for weeks. It makes an excellent specimen plant and a beautiful tree form when trimmed correctly. I have trained mine in the same fashion that I do with my mountain laurels, Vitex and Opuntia …that is as high as possible.

Now to business…

The past few days in the Patch I have spent contorted into unusual body positions, performing unusual maneuvers with rather antiquated tools, namely a hand saw, a screwdriver and a drill, I ache in places I never even new I had. What was I doing? Well for some strange reason I sort of fell into a project that I have been thinking about for ages. I have just never really known how to get started or where to begin. Having some spare lumber already on hand to form the backbone of the project, I decided it was time to jump in and give it a bash. I was going to build a bench!

“I am Maximus Decimus Meridius and this garden bench SHALL prevail”.

It turned out that this activity was perfectly timed with The Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop – “Garden Benches”, over at: http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=11763

This bench would not be planned, it would not be exact, it was not going to adhere to any ergonomic standards, in fact the whole thing was going to be improvised, winged, made up on the spot…

No spirit levels, no circular saws and strictly no set squares, oh no, that would make the job too easy. It was either going to end up looking like something from the Beverly Hillbillies or miraculously turn out looking like something that resembled a garden bench, I had no idea.

My intent was to develop some form of seating between these two trellised vertical posts, I say “some form” as I really had no idea what was going to form, or how I was going to build it. The two posts were also not aligned, the right one was actually twisted…mmm, I would deal with this little inconvenience later I told myself. Early on in the non-planning stage it slowly dawned on me that the Mexican weeping bamboo that I had only removed from the front of my house a couple of weeks back was slap-bang in the middle of the right hand side of where the future “seat” needed to be. As much as I dreaded digging the beast up once again it just had to be done.

A few Home Depot brackets and a bit of concrete later I had the skeleton of my Frankenstein’s bench blocked out. Photo courtesy of elder Hobbit.

I was determined at this point, that whatever I built, it was going to have a building code equivalent to Fort Knox…oh yes, this bench was going to be solid and quite large as it turns out.

Putting on the seating slats had to be one of the most mundane jobs…ever, especially considering that I was screwing everything down by hand, it took me the best part of three hours, each panel having four screws in it. While I was performing this mind-numbing task I actually taught my daughter the meaning of the word “tedious”, just to take my mind off it. The smell from the blooming Meyer lemon was the only thing that kept me sane.

Here is the final Alice in Wonderland throne in all her pre-stained glory. In order to secure the backboards to something in the middle, I found that I required yet another post to be concreted in for support, digging that hole was such a joy! Not! I used the top of this new post for a small shelf, I figured it may come in useful for something in the future, like citronella candles! You can see it behind “Alice”, she is already hosting a tea-party on it!

“Interesting proportions ESP.”

Likewise Helena !

The bench seats all members of the Patch with room to spare! Just a couple of finishing touches…

Well you have to have one of these…

“Nice touch ESP”!

…and a couple of lucky horseshoes to ensure your arse stays splinter free! Now I need a few more coats of stain, a seating mat and some pillows and its done. An improvised bench that took three days. My oldest hobbit calls it the garden sofa, me? I have many names for it, most of which will make your hair curl!

This new bench offers a great lounging place from which most of the garden can be viewed, in the shade!

The unintentional over-sized proportions really gives it a sense of presence in the Patch…where has it been all my life! I have another two vertical beams that I am thinking I may use to construct another, but not until the memory of building this one fades into my subconscious.