Back to the plants...

Well, it's definitely time to get back to the prickly plants on this blog... Spring is here, within a few weeks there will be not even the remote chance of a frost. The first pic is of three different prickly pears... the two that are in the same post were started as single pads, and have grown up to the point that this spring or early summer, I'll probably separate them. The purple one, by the way, is not a Santa Rita... it's O. gossiliana, a plant that is often sold as Santa Rita... It did turn purple with the winter cold, but the pads are usually silvery gray. The new growth is even darker purple which fades to green... which I'm told is the primary way to separate the species. On a Santa Rita - the growth starts out green and turns purple after it grows up. It doesn't really matter, I like the thing anyway...
These next two were planted outside on March 30, 2008 - here's the link to the original post when that happened, so that you can see they've definitely grown in almost a year... http://lpfleamarket.blogspot.com/2008/03/winter-hardy-cactus.html
The first is an Echinocactus texensis, common name of Texas Horse Crippler. (How it got that name is in the above post, so I'm not gonna repeat it here.) Of course, if you look at the tag, it says Texas Lace Cactus. I think that's supposed to be a politically correct 'nice' name. I've never heard it before I saw it on this tag thought... It's about doubled in size, but it's still probably not big enough to bloom...

The next plant, I was afraid I was gonna lose this winter. Mammillaria sonorensis v. craigii... misidentified in the above post as a M. meiacantha... The thing is, this species isn't supposed to survive our winters here... All the references I checked say it's not hardy above zone 9 and I'm on the line between zone 7 & zone 8. Here's a link that shows this plant covered with ice this winter... http://lpfleamarket.blogspot.com/2009/01/well-i-finally-crawled-out-to-see-what.html

Well, not only did it survive, if you look close, you can see flower buds beginning to emerge.

So, it looks like I'll have some pics for you... I've never been able to predict blooms on Mamms though. Sometime it'll look like another week before they open, and they'll explode the next day. Other times I practically wait for a full bud to open and it'll take a week. Kind of annoying... but I'll keep my eyes open for pics.

Two Small Parks...

Everyday this week, I've been running back and forth between Dallas and Ft. Worth, to the same areas of each city each time...

At the end of each run, there are small city parks where I pull over to wait for the next job, and possibly eat my lunch...

These pics come from the Dallas park... I don't even think it has a name. It's in the middle of an industrial district, and quite frankly, the small creek running through it is the only reason it exist. It provides very necesary drainage for our torrential rains, and keeps everything from flooding... but there is a little basketbal court, and a parking lot, and plenty of oak and sycamore trees for the local factory workers, and occasional courier drivers... to take their lunch breaks... I got to take pics of this egret as he hunted for minnows, and also got a shot of some wild violets peaking up through the leaves... Of course, it was right at high noon so the sun was a little too bright ...

Now, since it provides drainage, there is more than it's fair share of plastic cups and such laying around, but I did catch sight of a few frogs jumping around. That means that it's probably not seriously poluted, as amphibians are usually the first things to disappear. But what those frogs chances are with that egret there are beyond me...

I didn't take any pics in the Ft. Worth park because I was too busy... I was distracted by it's creek...

The creek in the Ft Worth park cuts through several layers of rock, and this rock is rich in fossils... Nothing too dramatic... but if you're willing to scratch around in the nearly dry creekbed you can find some fossilized shells and ammonites, and my absolute favorite fossils are the ones that are probably the least significant... When this mud was laid down, before it turned to rock, earthworms and other creatures dug tunnels through it. Therefore the most common fossils you find are rocks with holes all the way through them. I have some wierd fondness for rocks in general and holey rocks in particular. But the second I happened to think to myself that I should take a pic, an order beeped on my radio... but I should get a pic in the next few days as that park is right near one of our big clients.

Have a great day!

Mockingbirds...

“Remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father's right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.” From "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

Of course, Atticus Finch was trying to teach his children a valuable lesson, to be kind to creatures and people who are harming noone. But as for that wonderfully flowery quote, anybody who gardens knows that it is absolute nonsense... Mockingbirds, despite their wonderful trills, are also one of the most annoying creatures on the face of the earth. They seem to take particular delight in pecking a small hole in each and every tomato on the vine, then moving on to do the same to the peaches on the tree.

As for the sin aspect... I make no moral judgements and would not presume to tell anyone what is or isn't a sin, but here in Texas, it is illegal. They are our state bird. They weren't made the state bird for their song though, they were made state bird for their ferocious temperament, namely, the willingness to defend their home territory against any attacker, no matter the size or odds of winning the battle.

And they will attack, dive bombing cats, dogs and people who come too near their nests.

I caught this guy sitting on top of a shrub, practising his mating calls, and he sang continuously for 6 minutes before taking a snack break, and then starting in again. He may be starting to establish a territory, but it's too early for the actual mating season... when that starts his song will be accompanied by acrobatic jumps about 3 feet in the air, flashing the white patches under his wings to let any other birds in the area know that this is his turf and they'd be well advised to stay clear. It's also accompanied by fits of avian insomnia and all night singing. Take my word for it, the song that is so wonderful outside the dining room window when your having your morning coffee is absolutely unnerving at midnight outside your bedroom window.

All this would be fine for a couple of weeks in the spring, but here in Texas, they raise at least 2 clutches of eggs a summer, usually 3 but sometimes 4, each and every clutch preceeded by a fit of incessant warbling. But, we live with them.

I swear, I've been good... Honest!

Yes, I know I've been carping about not working as much, and not making as much money, and growing my own veggies and basically just being self-congradulatory about how cheep I am and not spening my money...

But that was before I knew there was a 4 1/2 foot tall plaster of paris floor lamp shaped like a cactus sitting in a Goodwill in Lewisville, Texas with a $9.99 price tag...

And if anybody out there thinks I didn't buy this obnoxious thing and drive it 35 miles home, then I don't know who's blog you've been reading, but it wasn't mine...

Here it is:

Or more precisely, here it was... you see, it was that awful pastel blue that you used to see a lot of in the late 80's Southwestern decor, which makes a certain amount of sense, as that's probably when it dates too... But the paint was chipped in quite a few places, and I don't want to remember the 80's anyway, so I stopped at Lowes and invested in a can of more natural looking matte green... And while I was at Lowes, I saw a 2 1/2 foot tall fiberglass saquaro for $148.00... so I think I got a good deal.

Not bad huh? The flash on the camera makes the color a little lighter than reality, but you get the idea... I'm thinking that I need to find something to glue on for the spines, just to make it more realistic... My first thought was nails, but since this is replacing a floor lamp by my bed that I really never liked anyway, it occured to me that the last thing I need is to have one too many beers, then impale myself on a nail-studded plaster cactus trying to turn the light off... It might not be that easy to explain in the Emergengy Room. So, this is fine for now.

So, I have rewarded myself for being financially responsible for the month. Besides, this is my official 200th post, and I had to buy myself a present to celebrate.

well shucks...

I was going to get some gardening done today, but we seem to have some weather blowing in... the wind chimes are banging around at a level that's starting to get annoying. I may have to run outside and set them on the ground soon, just to get some peace and quiet... the jingly jangly is starting to work my nerves....

no pics this week. Just didn't see anything worth taking a pic of. Thursday was a very trying day, a total of three orders that were completely and unnecesarilly more difficult than was absolutely neccesary, including having to wait at the airport for a package that was sitting in plain sight the whole time. Grrrrr....

I now have a total of 4 bales of straw curing for the garden. I set them in a square in the back yard, the empty space in the middle I may use for further composting, just throwing leaves and plant trimmings in there as they happen... I couldn't resist checking and I have confirmed that the seed potatoes are starting to root in the tires. There will be two hills of them. I have another giant flower pot here, and I'm considering sitting it against the fence to grow some sweet potato vines. I had one sprout in the cabinet, and the vines look really great climbing up the fence, and they have quite nice purple flowers too. Growing them in that giant flower pot will make them easier to harvest, as the part of the fence I have room for them is sitting in a part of the yard where the origional contractors who built the house 20 years ago evidently dumped excess concrete and mortar, so about six inches under the soil level, there are chunks of rocks... I've been pulling them out for years now, but there doesn't seem to be any end to them. Doesn't make digging for sweet potatoes easy.

The cucumbers will be vined up a dead eucalyptis tree... Cukes bear heavier when they're climbing, so if you're only going to grow a couple of plants, you give them support. I'm putting an old tire over the trunk and setting it on the ground. You then attach old wire hangers which you've un-bent into circles along the trunk, to give the vine tendrils something small to grab onto. The tire will keep my compost in one area, where I need it so it doesn't get wasted. Plant about 4 seeds in there, and let the plants climb away... I've done this before, and got enough cukes to eat all summer, and enough to make pickles.

I'd find a place on the fence for the cukes to grow, but I can't as I'll be vining pole beans up that...

I thought about growing some cabbages. They are really beautiful when they're growing, looking a lot like giant green roses. But they're also relatively inexpensive at the store, so I probably won't bother. I can always change my mind later though. While we can plant cabbage now, we can also plant them in August here, for a fall crop to store for winter use.

Carrots are another veggie I may consider come August. The potato tires should be harvesting about that time, so I may use the tires for carrots after that... I've never been able to grow them in the ground here, as our soil tends to compact and prevent them from growing good, and the straw bales don't really work for root crops, as that straw is pretty tightly packed...even if they did grow good, it would be impossible to get them out.

Peas, either sweet peas or eating peas, have to be planted in the first week of Sept. here, and they'll bloom and produce right up into January. Sweet peas often survive all winter. Some of them may go along the fence where the green beans were, as they'll be gone by then, and so should the cukes, although I have harvested cukes right up to October. Of course, it's entirely possible that I'll be sick of cukes by then...

Sorry about all the rambling... And now I have to go, as the cats have started their usual "I am cute, I am lovable, I am adorable, now FEED ME BEFORE I HAVE TO GET UGLY" routine...

Rambling round town again...

Well, Monday, not today, I actually had some time off in a part of town that I could take pics, so I took a few. Unfortunately, most of them ended up looking like the work of a first year photography student, and I didn't like them.

This is the only one that I thought was worth showing anybody, but it still has that photography student look to it... a little too self-consciously artistic...

It works, because of the contrast of the old, half torn down building, with the new skyline in back... (That's Dallas, by the way...) and of course that wonderful Texas sky. But, I still find it a little too self-conscious to really like it...

But then, I'm probably thinking about it too much, right?

I had a decent day at work, but it didn't end well. I'm having to take a pay cut to keep my job... it would be worse, but I know that the office has plain, flat out laid off people, and of the 2 VP's, one has taken early retirement, and the other has taken a demotion and pay-cut, so it's not like many companies where the top level keeps getting richer while everyone else suffers. But, it still doesn't feel good to know that I'm going to have to tighten my belt a little more. I mean, I'm a skin-flint now, how much cheaper can I get?

I didn't come here to gripe. So I'm going to leave now...

Later.

just rambling on in the garden...

No pics today... I spent most of today in the garden doing more or less un-photogenic things... started my potato tires... it's a technique I've heard about before, but never got the gumption to try...

You get an old tire. Set it on window screening or landscape cloth, then fill it at least halfway with topsoil. Cut up one seed potato into 3 or 4 sets... then plant it in the tire.

As the potato grows, you keep raising the soil level around the plants by adding straw, lawn and shrub trimmings, etc...(Don't cover the growing tip! But the plant will send out new roots, which grow potatoes all along where it's covered) When the first tire is full... add another tire to the top and keep going... up to three tires total... When the potatoes are ready to harvest, the tires will be full of the potatoes, and all your straw and leaves and such will be compost. If you're using good rich stuff in there, up to a bushel in each mound... I've set two mounds, although the guy at the nursery wasn't happy with me buying 2 seed potatoes, he'll get over it... I'm going to see how it works out. I'll keep you posted...

I also have set out two bales... that's bales of hay. I wanted bales of straw, they're cheeper, but I ended up with hay for free so I'm not complaining. What you do with them is set them on the ground in the yard, with the baling wire going parallel to the ground... that way the cut end of the straw is poking up... then you put some sort of high nitrogen fertilizer on there. Most of the web people say ammonium nitrate... the problem with that is that that's the stuff that they make car bombs out of, so a lot of places won't sell it to someone who isn't a farmer... You can also use any lawn fertilizer, or if you're like me, and know people who have horses, you can put some composted horse manure on top... water it real good, and in a couple of weeks, it will have started composting good and you can plant things in it. You just stick a big knife or spade or something into the top of the bale, and wedge a tomato plant in it...

The advantages are 1) the cutworms and ground dwelling pests can't get up to your plant. 2) The straw really holds water well, and in this part of the country that's a big advantage and 3) you're basically growing in pure compost, and after what you're growing is done, you can till it in to the yard.

I've heard of it for the last few years, but I wasn't sure about it... then a friend of mines 80 year old father told me he remembered his father doing it when he was younger, and "that blasted mater got 7 foot tall, and we were eating canned maters all blasted winter..."

Well, with a hyperbolic recomendation like that, how could I not?

Now, they say on the web that you just sit the thing in the yard, and that's what I did, and that contact with the soil not only helps the composting process, but that the roots of your plant will go right through the bale into the dirt. But, with a little extra water, you can put the bales on concrete, if you are unfortunate enough not to have actual dirt around you.

Another friend of mine is looking into this for another reason... The only section of the yard that she can feasably put a garden in is low, and the clay soil gathers and holds water, making roots rot in the ground. She's thinking that 1 or maybe two years of about 20 bales, and she'll be able to raise some veggies, raise the soil level and get some badly needed organics into that clay... I told her it was worth a shot and it couldn't hurt... we're not talking about an area that raising the soil will interfere with some other drainage...

Anyway, that's been my day.

later...

Happy valentines day...

just a quick post to leave a rose for all my bloggers for valentines day...

I gots flowers!

I went outside to take pics of this years first daffodil blooms, and of course my gardening assistant, Phennig, promptly had to come over and see what I was up to...
And before you ask, Phennig is a German word for penny, and he got named that because that's all he's worth...

later.

birdhouses

So, I haven't posted in a while, and I decided I had to post something...

I hung the birdhouses today... this one is one I made... It started as a piece of old fencing with a knot-hole in it... so I made it into a box, and hung it on my fence...


And this one started out as a trashed ukulele... I play ukes, and this one ended up here some how or other. It doesn't sound good, and it wasn't worth fixing, so I hung it on the fence too...

I don't know if either of these will inspire a home-making instinct in any of my local feathered denisens, but I have been noticing song sparrows and house wrens flitting around the neighborhood and poking into little spaces, so I thought it was time to make sure they had a home if they wanted it.

And that's about it. I haven't had a very exciting week...

But next week will be better, I'm sure.

Crown of Thorns...

So, I'm sitting at home doing absolutely nothing again... a ball joint went out on my drivers side front tire, and I certainly can't drive with the tire at an angle, so there we are...



One of the side effects of having the only cactus garden in the neighborhood, with spiny plants prominently displayed in the front yard, is that I occasionally get annonymous "donations." I haven't quite figured out if this is an advantage or a disadvantage... but I went out the front door this morning and practically tripped over a prickly item on my front step... turned out to be a Crown of Thorns, Euphorbia milli var. splendens...

It origionally looked half dead... but after a little attention ie: pulling off a dead branch, several dead leaves and flowers, then repotting, it's not half bad. It even has some new blooms developing...

I think that this is a plant somebody aquired at Christmas, as it had traces of glitter on some of the leaves and it was in one of those plastic nursery pots and sleaves... somebody probably decided to leave it on my porch, thinking that the local cactus freak would love it. Either that or they were hoping I'd end up crippled with thorns in my ankles...

Now, Crown of Thorns aren't high on my list of favorite plants... They're one of the plants that I remember every old lady in the neighborhood had growing on the front porch when I was a kid. Sometimes planted in an old enamel cooking pot. I don't dislike them, but it certainly never occured to me to aquire one. They're nice enough when they bloom, and if properly taken care of, there's usually a bloom or two around. I'm informed in my reading that in very hot climates, they may go dormant in the summer, but I think I'll probably be able to keep it going. The larger leaves point out that this probably isn't one of the dwarf varieties, so it might actually get to a fairly large size... which means I now possess yet another large spiney thing to carry into the house every winter.

Tire Gardening!

So, I was driving along the road, minding my own business, when I saw this truck hauling tires that are about 12 feet wide... and the first thing I thought was, "Dang, can you imagine the garden that Julie would grow in those?"

LOL

And that's all the post I have...

Visit Julie over at A Succulent Life... link to the right.

Later