East Side Patch

"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).

and finally…

An unfurling Gerbera Daisy looks like it would be a great home for “Nemo,” a movie I have watched 18.25 times, (not by choice).

Oh, Just one more daisy…

Stay Tuned For:
“Dr Strange-glove”
All material © 2009 for east_side_patch. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

"Bamboo Aliens"

ESPatch Mar 12, 2009 0 comments

“Look Maggy the mainframe has intercepted a sub-space blog posting that indicates that one of our hatch-ling cocoons has been discovered on the, wait one minute, fourth, no the third planet from the sun in the Milky-way system. Set an intercept course immediately”.
“Course laid in Hamish.”

This was the disturbing gooey, alien scene inhabiting
one of my weeping bamboos, and it covered
quite a large area! I have never seen anything
like this before, any ideas anyone?
My best guess is bamboo mealy bug.
I investigated a little deeper into the sticky interior…

And I pulled out what I first thought was a marinated
grilled quail (I always garden in white forensic gloves),
then quickly realized that I needed to make some
serious phone calls.

“Scully this came out of ESP’s
weeping bamboo!”
“I know Mulder, but there is something
even more disturbing you need to see on
ESP’s front sidewalk, it may be related”…

“I believe everything. And l believe nothing. I suspect everyone. And l suspect no one. I gather the facts, examine the clues… and before you know it, the case is solved!”

Someone had committed a crime on my sidewalk and believe me it wasn’t for the faint hearted. I applied pressure to the area with one of my digits, but sadly the fruit died in my fingertips.

The interior of the wound looked just a little too life-like for comfort.
My prickly pear dropping a whole bunch of ripe fruit right now.

The Coat of Arms was designed by A painting of what Tenochtitlan would have looked like
Francisco Eppens Helguera,
a famous Mexican Architect .

The Aztec people were guided by god Huitzilopochtli to seek a place where an eagle landed on a prickly-pear cactus, eating a snake… After hundreds of years of searching they saw a sign on a small swampy island in Lake Texcoco. Their new home they named Tenochtitlan (“Place of the Prickly Pear Cactus”). In A.D. 1325 they built a city on the site of the island in the lake; this is now the center of Mexico City…Amazing!
The plant depicted on the coat of arms is a nopal cactus.

Prickly Pear Cactus have been
a staple food of Native Americans
for centuries. Some
species were introduced into
North America from tropical
America. It is sold in Mexican
markets as “tuna.”
Prickly pear juice can be used to
make jelly, conserve, marmalade
and even poured on salads. And if you
are feeling like a real party animal
mix the juice with 7-Up or ginger ale
and you will have a drink similar to a:

The fruit of prickly pears, also goes by the name of cactus figs or Indian fig,
it has to be peeled carefully to remove the small spines on the outer skin
before consumption.

Oh, one more thing, if your hair is lacking a certain lustre,
the gel-like sap of this plant can be used as a hair conditioner!
You can have a refreshing beverage and condition
your hair at the same time!

The mother plant is so huge now. I keep whacking off the low branches to encourage a higher growth habit. These wooden stems are really deceptive, inside their woody looking exterior lies a relatively soft succulent. The hand saw just glides through these boughs, (it makes a nice change to cut through something, actually anything, with less effort than you thought it would actually take!) an extremely rare phenomenon.

Everything but the kitchen sink! My white-trash rain collection “system” looks really attractive dosn’t it?
Oh, and it is a really easy and fast “system” to set up – no plumbing expertise required! One day I will get to this!

Yes as you can see, some rain has finally made it to Central Texas this week, and I am not about to waste a drop of it. With temperatures going up and down faster than the stock market, it is hard to tell if we are in summer or winter.
Just before the cold and wet weather arrived I was basking outside on one of my canvas seats watching one of my Harry Potters casting a spell…

“Tillandsia recurvata”! “Aye’s has a very bad feeling about all of this.”

I had my camera tucked between my legs (for what I believed was safe keeping).
After all the “spells” were executed, the light moving to dusk. we got up and went inside.
I awoke during the night to the sound of rain hitting our metal roof, ahh,
I smiled and resumed rehearsing the sea-shanty I was whistling through my nose.
I can’t quite be sure but at one point I think someone joined in for a short duet.

The following morning I was going through my usual routine; I showered and put on my boots to go feed my fish. This is when I encountered a problem, I never leave the house without my camera, I have learned the shortest journey down my yard (without a camera), always creates the best opportunity for a truly fantastic shot. It is second nature to me now to slip it into my pocket before exiting the house. The problem was my camera was missing…

I scoured all the usual places it generally frequents, the dresser, the bowl, that little shelf that no-body ever uses, nothing. I began to have a really bad sinking feeling. After about half an hour of checking exactly the same places five times, (plus the obligatory peek inside the refrigerator), I glanced out of my window, and with a sort of sixth sense, my eyes fell right on it. I could see it shining on one of the canvas chairs, but what was that reflection above it? Something was terribly wrong.

[Re-Inactment].
It was lying there like an electronic “Ophelia”, submerged under a few inches of our well needed water. I ran outside moaning a dramatic, cinematic, slow-motioned “Noooooooo”! and scooped it from of it’s watery grave. I have no idea what I was thinking, like I could bring it back to life, perhaps it had miraculously survived a cold night under-water? Ridiculous!
I turned on the oven, wrapped it up and gently placed my little waterlogged piece of technology on a low heat for a few hours. It is now residing on one of our heater vents on the floor where it will stay for the next week or so, on the remote chance it will spring back to life again.

“It can happen!”
Lets go back to where all this started…
Ballmoss…Tillandsia recurvata

Nerd alert! Nerd alert! Ne…….
I want to take a break from all the drama happening on the East-side and write a little about this mis-understood bromeliad. We all have it, most of us hate it, but its here to stay so lets take an unbiased look at this woven ball of grass.

First of all, ball moss isn’t really a moss at all, but a true plant with flowers and seed. It is a member of the Bromeliad family, so it is related to the pineapple of all things. Ball moss is an epiphyte, (non-parasitic plant living on other plants), similar to many other bromeliads such as orchids, ferns, and my favorites, lichens.
The common assumption is that ball moss is a parasite, sucking and zapping the strength out of healthy trees like a vampire . Some people also think that heavy infestations of ball moss will cause a tree to decline because leaves can’t get enough light, but ball moss does not like sun, preferring the inner part of the crown of a tree, a place where most leaves are usually dead anyway. These ideas seem to be perpetuated by tree trimmers, oh and do not get me started about leaf-blowers…and time changes!
Most botanists are of the belief that there is no evidence to support any of these fears. It must be noted however, on really heavy infestations a tree may go “into decline” due to the ball moss smothering the buds and limiting circulation to the branch-ends due to the plants circular growth habit. I emphasize here, heavy infestations.

Roots and seed pods. The seeds in these fruits are long gone. The seeds incorporate long hairs which helps them to ride the wind currents and ultimately to stick to something, even chain link fencing!

Ball moss anchors its “pseudo-roots” into the bark, but actually derives no nutrients from the tree, the roots are a securing mechanism only. The plant uses tendrils called “hold fasts” to fasten themselves to branches, and they are extremely effective. It survives by absorbing water and nutrients from the atmosphere. Ball moss “fixes” atmospheric nitrogen and eventually returns it to the soil much like alfalfa and clover plants do. More than likely ball moss does no harm to healthy trees, except to make the “inhabited” trees unsightly in many people’s eyes, for this reason it is generally despised, and aggressively eradicated.
I don’t know if they are still carrying them, but the Big Red Sun used to make some really creative arrangements from these “air” plants.

Poor ball moss! There will always be a “limited” place for you in my post oak.
Besides they make great wands, flamboyant toupees and inexpensive hackysacs.

Some other areas of interest in the patch this wet week…

My Gasteria looking more stomach-like, (and a little flamingo), with every passing day.

The start of a new elephant ear. Kaboom!

This one always confuses me…is this some type of Lambs Ear?
It pops up sporadically in my yard. It looked pretty amazing today with its furry leaves hanging on to the moisture.

A succulent flower hit hard by the rains.

Lantana blooms.

Is this an anole? Is this a mechanism to protect the fly from anoles? To
make anoles think it is an anole? Or is this a load of old anoles?
What do you think?
I believe this is a fire-fly?

The tiniest of succulents in the tiniest of holey rock cavities. Meet Bill and Ben the holey rock men. It is amazing anything can grow in this tiny, elevated spot on the rock, if there is a will, nature will find a way.

A macro marigold resembles a red-hot barbecue.