“A Star is Born”

ESPatch Jul 19, 2011 5 comments

You can see why it is called Texas star hibiscus,

Hibiscus coccineus

and what an ornate and complex bloom it is, on the subject of blooms, this sunflower has taken on storybook proportions.

I planted a lot of different kinds of large sunflower seeds earlier this year but I think the super-dry conditions or perhaps the birds got to the them before they had a chance to grow. Even though I managed to grow just the one, it was well worth it.

I came across this intimidating insect next to a patio I am working on. It was large and adorned some serious tribal markings, it was moving at a frenetic pace on the ground.

This is a cicada killer wasp,

“Sphecius speciosus”

or sometimes called a sand hornet, this large female was extremely busy digging in the earth.

She was digging a burrow beneath a live oak tree, no doubt a good source for future cicada hunting and gathering. Yes folks, I am afraid it is another one of those – I am going to paralyze you, drag you into a dark cave, then my offspring will slowly devour you stories.

After digging a nest chamber (which have been reported to be over a meter long), female cicada killers capture cicadas, paralyzing them with a sting, the female wasp then straddles it and takes off toward her burrow…

yee-haa!

This return flight to the burrow is difficult for the wasp (and I am sure no joyride for the cicada) because the cicada is often more than twice her weight. After putting the cicada in the nest cell, the female deposits an egg on the cicada and closes the cell behind her with dirt…Brrr. On a brighter note, these large wasps are generally non-aggressive towards humans. Still, I was taking no chances photographing this one.

Tiny voice: “Scared of a wasp now ESP?”

Be quiet Jeff and enjoy the ice cream that you are stuck in.

Staying on the subject of rather large insects I unearthed this female

Strategus aloeus julianus

or rhinoceros beetle and it was a monster. I threw a saddle over it and took it for a walk around the garden. These chaps are among the largest of beetles, reaching 60 millimeters in length, but are completely harmless to humans because they cannot bite or sting. Their common names: Hercules beetles, unicorn beetles or horn beetles refer to the characteristic horns borne only by the males of most species in the group. The males use their horns for fighting (usually over food) and impressing a female. If a beetle is feeling threatened and cannot dig itself into the ground, it will make loud hissing squeaks.

“Scared me to death it did.”

The hissing squeak does not do anything but frighten a predator.

Okay that was bad…moving quickly to birds.

This family of doves perched in their “nest” on my Afghan pine, look totally ridiculous. These birds are not noteworthy for their engineering prowess when it comes to the art of nest-building. Oh no, in fact they appear to be totally rubbish at it, but they seem happy huddled together on their teetering platform. The whole scene is very:

JERRY: You ran over some pigeons? How many?
GEORGE: What ever they had. Miranda thinks I’m a butcher but i-i-it’s not my fault is it? Don’t we have a deal with the pigeons?
JERRY: Course we have a deal. They get out of the way of our cars, we look the other way on the statue defecation.
GEORGE: Right! And these pigeons broke the deal. I will not accept the blame for this!

These Monk Parakeets / Quaker Parrots must be nesting somewhere around the Patch as I keep seeing and hearing them squawking and squabbling, and do these birds like to squabble, one carry-on after another. These birds have naturalized in Austin for over twenty years.

This year is most certainly the year of the desert willow or Chilopsis. The hotter the temperatures, the dryer the drought, and the harsher the conditions the better this tree looks. I have never seen so much foliage and blooms as this year. This tree is actually not a true willow, it is called a willow only due to the shape of its leaves, the tree is actually a member of the Bignonia family.

Hummingbirds love it, and it is perfect for a hell-strip or anywhere that suffers reflected heat.

These feather grasses are now up to three years old and still going strong, they are currently in their brown phase awaiting some summer hair combing and trimming.

Or perhaps not.

Celosia is now springing up all over the place, this will put on a great fall show, attaining heights of 6+ feet.

Finally:

“Just like that, not like that, just like that.”

It is the time of phlox in the Shire.

lots and lots of phlox,

what a great word…phlox.

This stock tank planted up with King Tut papyrus and burgundy canna lilies is also relishing the baking heat,

heat that is affecting some of us in some very strange ways.

Stay Tuned for:

“Eviction”

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

Inspirational image of the week:

I want this as a guest house at the end of the Patch. It is the phlox!

“Not so fun in the Sun”

ESPatch Jul 9, 2011 10 comments

Our vacation shells have all been poured out around these baby jewels of Opar and this juvenile pinwheel sotol, the shells are a welcome reminder of our cooler and relaxing days spent at the beach. My brief holiday reprieve was immediately tempered on my return with an immediate 100+ degree jolt back into garden install reality. With my iced turban tying skills apparently lacking finesse (lack of practice), I have been forced to adapt to our current heated Texas temperatures the hard way…with a wayward turban combined with some plain old-fashioned hard work in the sun.

By the end of my first week back, I looked pretty grim.

I am hoping the Texas Sage, (barometer plant) that has been blooming all over town knows something the weatherman doesn’t.

One of my favorite tough shrubs. Both of these will be getting a hard pruning after this flush of blooms.

My celosia plants are curling on a daily basis as if they are trying to protect and shade themselves from the scorching rays of the death star,

rays that seem to be getting hotter and brighter with every passing day. The baking sun has been good for one thing though…

It has dried out these dead giant timber culms enough that when I pulled on one the other day It surprisingly moved a little at the base. This could not be a good thing, massive culms teetering over my neighbors house. Oh no, these needed to come down immediately. The bamboo roots had completely rotted and with a sharp twist they came away easily at the base, no saws or machete hacking required! I was feeling quite proud of myself until I realized that I was now wielding a forty foot spear.

“Ach ESP, thats nuthin’ we’ve bult spears twice that lungth before…and used them against the English in batt…”

Pie-hole William, shut it.

After cutting them to size these culms made great additions to my ever expanding bamboo fence.

Talking of fences, okay gates, remember this east side design?

Here is the rendering (left), and here is the hardscape (minus planting) installed and awaiting a softening fall planting. The Tejas black gravel and pale boulders reference the home colors, offering the visual illusion of widening the preexisting pathway.

Moving on:

If this sunken stock tank did not have a Madame Ganna Walska growing in it (now there is something you don’t get to say every day) I would be in it, squatting to my neck with some ice from the corner store attempting to cool down under the canopy of this Arizona ‘blue ice’ cypress.

My goal is to train this beach vitex and keep wrapping it all around the perimeter of the stock tank. (Sorry Les)… http://atidewatergardener.blogspot.com/

These purple fountain grasses,

Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’

have sprung up so fast this year, basking and swaying in the heated breezes.

This grass will look good well into the fall.

I keep planting the seeds from the background pride of Barbados all down this fence line, every year I seem to gain another couple of plants…

well worth the effort.

Datura is also in full-flight at the moment,

pushing out its psychotropic napkin blooms.

I dug up this star hibiscus late spring and replanted it in a large pot, placing and treating it like a marginal plant in my pond (thanks for the advice Bob, http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/ ). It first went into shock, I kept a close eye on it, then it rebounded with vigor and is doing better then it ever did in the ground. It has grown taller and developing a set of very decorative looking blooms.

Another stock tank experiment is slowly taking shape and filling in slowly with dwarf papyrus and horsetail reed. This tank is commonly referred to as the “disgusting tub’ by my halflings for a number of reasons. First of all I go around systematically prodding it with a bamboo cane, it generally responds with a few flatulent noises to the delight of everybody, secondly, as I filled the tank with Dillo Dirt, conversation wandered to exactly what Dillo Dirt was made from…well the “disgusting tub” obviously gained even more relevance. The event that sealed it as a place to avoid was when a bamboo prod led to the expulsion of the nasty stuff in a particularly violent air-bubble that sent some of the contents airborne and onto the side of my face. (Insert lots of ewwing).

I no longer prod this tank.

Finally:

Things tend to get quite surreal in the Patch when we hit three digit temperatures for a long period of time…

Brains get a little scrambled,

animals start going insane.

“Meoww…Kumo…look what I caught!”

“Is that a Carolina ‘pant’ Saddlebag dragonfly?”

Tramea carolina

” I believe it is my,eoww feather grass loving friend”

“Are you going to eat it?”

“Not immediately Kumo, I just need to torture it a little meow-more.”

“Kitty-kitty”!

Stay Tuned for:

“A Star is Born”

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