just stuff...

Just some shots around the yard... this pic is a little overexposed, it doesn't really show the firecracker red of the bloom... but you get the idea... Cleistocactus winteri, aka golden rat tail or my preferred common name, golden cat tail... click the label if you want to see past pics of the whole plant...

And of course, the Prickly pears are in bloom... I was worried that I was going to lose a lot of blooms and therefore fruits... which are very important to me for making jelly, but it turned out not so much.

Now this is a foundling from the side of the road, and I'm gonna see if I can do something with it... an Areca palm... Chrysalindocarpus lutescens. They make decent parlor palms... and if I was a little bit further south, decent yard palms to 10' tall... but this guy has been neglected.

Step 1: cut off anything that is obviously dead and leave anything that is green...

I realize that the couple of leaves left are in pretty bad shape, but there's enough green on them to still be doing SOME photosynthesis... and since they're the only leaves left, I'm leaving them for now...

SAGO UPDATE

The second Sago did eventually put up new fronds... kinda... it seems to be putting up 1 - count them ONE, new leaves. One of it's four remaining leaves has died off. The other three... beat up as they are, are staying on there for photosynthesising purposes. I just don't feel like further weakening an already obviously weak plant... of course, this is way too much bother for most people, but I seem to find a perverse pleasure in reviving the near deceased...

The other plant however is doing just fine! Remarkably fine, actually, and he's about ready to find a permanent home in the yard.

Hoping everyone is having a great Memorial day, complete with Bar-B-Que and lots of family and friends.

Later!

Bad news, good news, bad news... etc...

Well, the last post I was kvetching about how I didn't have any time off.

This post, I'm gonna kvetchy about how I have too much time off...

The blasted truck blew a piston.

This has happened before. The last time I blew a piston, we had to replace the piston in the engine... which is really really not a good idea. The problem was that we couldn't find a replacement engine for the love of money. Replacing the piston is really a band-aid job, and it's so not a good thing to do for several reasons... but we had no choice.

So, when I blew a piston again, I figured it was the band-aid job that went... turned out it was a different piston. Fortunately, this time, we found a replacement engine, and a little heavier duty engine at that...

The good news is that Spring is arriving in Dallas-Ft.Worth. Soon I'll be out in the yard planting and digging and all that jazz... I'd be doing it right now, but the weather isn't allowing it. Rained all day yesterday, and it's started up again today... any digging in our clay soil when it's this wet results in a large mass of compacted, rock hard dirt clods.

So, I took pics in the rain.

Here's the neighbors ornamental pear tree blooming...
Soon, the tree will be covered with dark purple leaves.

Here's some jonquils blooming in my yard...

I've never really figured out what the official difference between a jonquil and a daffodil is... or a narcissus for that matter. But, these were labeled jonquil when I bought them, so I'll take their word for it.

Now, for more bad news... I'm sure my regular readers will remember the record breaking snow we had a few weeks ago. (Officially, it was 12 1/2 inches at DFW airport) Carports collapsed... roofs caved in, Live Oaks, which have branches that grow more or less horizontally and keep their leaves all winter, catch a lot of heavy snow, and were dropping branches all over the place. My carport made it, and I don't have any live oaks, but the Prickly Pear that I grow for jelly-making also has extremely large pads, which caught the snow and snapped branches.

The plant will survive, and I may be able to actually root some of those branches by standing them in the ground. The extensive, established root systems will send up a lot of new growth this year, although blooms, and therefore fruit, come off older growth, so I'm not too sure of the harvest I'm gonna get come presserve making time. But we'll see...

It looks like I've also lost my variagated agave... which was fine till it got buried under the snow and it just gave up. And there's a few more plants which I'm just not sure of. We'll see I suppose...

Merry Christmas to all...

Just a few shots around the neighborhood... we had three whole inches of snow last night, so I was just itching to get out and take some pics... unfortunately, the snow was accompanied and followed by high winds, so we didn't get any pretty accumulation on the trees...

The first pic is some mistletoe growing about 20 feet above me in a neighbors mulberry tree. It's not a great shot... When I pointed the camera up, there were a whole flock of robins. They sat, gave me take time to focus, and the split second before I took the pic... they flew off.

Little boogers.


This is my rather pitiful excuse for a Christmas tree... it's really not so bad. It's an Italian Stone Pine, Pineus pinea. A juvenile tree about 3 years old. In a couple of more years, he'll start growing longer, greener needles... If he survives. They will survive here... they're hardy to zone 7 and I'm on the line between 7 & 8... and they'll do very well through our summers, being drought resistant. But they're not really the best tree to have around... they grow into an umbrella, flat topped kind of tree. And too big for my little suburban yard. The trees are the ones that produce edible pine nuts that you pay way too much money for at the store.

I'm thinking that I could bonsai it... or maybe just grow it in a larger pot until I can figure it out, or find someone with a yard big enough.

The biggest problem will be getting him through the winter until spring, when I can do something with him. They really need a whole lot of light, and they usually won't survive inside until spring. As soon as it thaws though, I'll shove him in the coldframe. I'm not gonna shock him by throwing him out there right now though...

here's a shot of a mourning dove all fluffed up in the sun...

And finally, in the sheltered alley, some show accumulation... but not a pretty picture.

And that's about the best I could do today... I thought of getting one of the cats to come out and play in the snow for some shots. They informed me that I was quite insane, refused to discuss it further and would have locked me out of the house if they could figure out how to turn that little knob...

I had planned on going to midnight mass last night, at the church I've been attending recently, and plan on actually becoming a member of in the New Year. But the snow started yesterday afternoon, and after it ended, the wind kept up. Which means the friction of the wind melted the snow on the roads, and as soon as the wind died, it froze. I was still gonna risk it, but I was hearing sirens about every 30 to 45 minutes {I live fairly close to a major street. Whenever the sirens would go by, Dad used to joke that they were playing the "Cooper Street Blues" }

I decided that Baby Jesus was a forgiving sort, and would be more than willing to overlook my absense.

Instead, I curled up next to the truly obnoxious 5 foot tall cactus lamp, with a good book (Will Self, The Book Of Dave) and cats curled up on me. I had a very nice, mellow and blessedly peaceful Christmas Eve.

Seeing as I grew up in a household with a sibling who was later formally diagnosed as bipolar (except they called it Manic-Depresive then) peaceful holidays are my preference. I don't have a huge amount of warm fuzzy childhood memories about Chirstmas, and I have a hard time faking it for everyone elses sake, so I tend to let everybody else have their fun, and I'll have mine.

And all that is probably more than you needed to know, but there we are.

The point is, and I DO have one, is that I truly hope that everybody out there is having a wonderful holiday, no matter how you choose to celebrate it...

now... this is what we're talking about...

home-made Prickly Pear Cactus Jelly...

also known as a mouthful of sweet-tart yummilisciousness...


The reward for making jelly is what's left after you fill the jars... you just put it in a little bowl, make some quick biscuits and eat it up... I mean, you don't want to waste anything, right?

See the previous post for more...

Prickly Pear Jelly begins...

And the jelly making process has begun!

You start with fruit on the cactus...

then you pick you a bunch of them... I picked over twice what you need for a batch of jelly... you don't actually need many, about a quart, but I always make extra juice... you can freeze it in 2 1/2 cup bricks to make a batch later.
The color of the inside of the fruit is so amazing... it always surprises me, even though I've cut hundreds of these things open in my life, that magenta is always a shock...
halved, covered in water, they'll be brought to a boil then cooked till tender. This is absolutely necessary to extract all the flavor and goodness...
And now, the fruit is in a jelly bag, dripping juice into a bowl... which I would have took a pic of, but quite frankly, it ain't interesting...

As my regulars here know, my Mother passed away recently. I'm actually dealing with it well, but Thanksgiving was a bit of a downer... all my normal holiday rituals and routines just went out the door.

I was lucky in that my 'adopted' family made sure I didn't spend it alone. I had my turkey day with Robert & Grace, their three grown daughters - who grew up calling me uncle and my mother 'Grandma,' - their husbands and a whole passel of kids...

I took a batch of pumpkin - cranberry muffins with me.

Of course they told me I didn't have to bring anything because they were raised right.

And, of course, I had to bring something because I was raised right.

It's one of those Southern catch-22's. We don't worry about it, we just live with it...

Anyway, it's one of my uber-simple recipes... take a can of pumpkin, a yellow cake mix and a bag of dried cranberries. Mix them together... sprinkle in some cinnamon, bake them in lined cup cake tins at 400 for 18 to 20 minutes.

Surprisingly good....

It occurs to me that I'm going to have to construct my own traditions now.

I think making this jelly, which Mom and I used to make together, will probably become a part of it...

negelected prickly pear

Most of us have one of THOSE spots in the yard. It's that spot between the fence and the shed, or behind the garage. That place where you shove things until you can deal with them later, and then the classic adage, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind," kicks in and you just plain forget about it.

Or maybe you remember it, when you're shoving something else out there, and you think, "Oh, that's right, I wanted to do something with that..." then you walk away and forget it all over again.

This is what happened here... This started out as a small seedling of Optunia humifusa that someone gave me, and I shoved in this pot and shoved it in a location out of sight, between the house and the pillar that holds up the 4 foot wide eave of the house....

Now, somebody gave me this little seedling 4 years ago. And it's been sitting there, on top of 1 inch of dirt, in the shade of the eaves without any water and totally negelgted. Not bad, huh?

Of course, the pads have stunted to about 1 inch wide, and it's fading to yellow... but it is surviving and I'll probably do something with it eventually... Which is pretty much what I said 4 years ago.

Optunia humifusa is a prostrate cactus that spreads through fields, never getting more than one pad high. The newer pads root where they touch the ground, and the old pads usually die off... It does have very pretty sulfer yellow blooms, and light pink fruits that birds like but aren't really edible for people. Varieties of this species grow throughout the US and into Canada.

I've seen fairly nice displays where they're used as a ground cover, but the habit of the old pads to turn brown and die off, means that it requires maintenance, and the spines and rather viscious glochids on this species make maintenance a painful proposition... which is probably why I stuck it in the corner and tried to forget it.

But, this guy has proven himself very resilient, and I'll probably reward him with a real pot and real dirt and hopefully, he'll end up looking decent.

well, howdy strangers...

I'm afraid I haven't been a very good blogger lately.

The truck is back in the shop, and there's some family issues that I am most definitely not going to go into here, but I've been distracted to say the least.

Anyway, I decided that today I would take some personal time with my plants. Here's the Escobaria vivipara... bloomin like a darned fool. Some years it puts out blooms in masses of 15 to 20 at a time, and at other years, like this year, it puts out a few at a time every few days... I have no idea what triggers this behavior. Maybe it's got something to do with winter rain...

This is the Dallas Red crepe myrtle in the front yard...

This is the Notocactus leninghausii (Golden Ball) cactus in the back rock garden. The tag it came with said it was winter hardy to 20 degrees farenheight. I'm not too sure. What I'll probably do is get some clear plastic bowls to put over the top of the plants this winter if it looks like its going to get too cold...

And this is a Ferocactus latispinus ( Devil claw) cactus. Ditto on the 20 degrees on this one. I'm really not sure of this, because I can't find any online resources that say it's that hardy... again, clear plastic bowls may be put into service.

And this was marked as a Trichocereus grandifloris hybrid. Which means that its really an Echinopsis, since all the trichos were moved into that genus recently. Again, it's supposed to be hardy to 20, and again, I'm not sure...

This is a cholla. Not sure what species, but it's a 'start' from someone down the street, so I know it'll be fine.

And these are the napales in the tub, putting out new growth. They're definitely not winter hardy, so I'll have no qualms whatsoever about eating all the pads that come out... The varieagated grass is Stenotaphrum secundatum 'Variegatum' - in other words, common St. Augustine lawn grass except it's variegated. kind of cool... but not all St. Augustine grass varieties are winter hardy in Texas, so it's an experiment.

And that's about all for the moment.

Really, I just wanted to let everybody know that I'm still around. Haven't fell off the side of the planet yet.

later

nothing particularly new...

Well, ever since last Monday, I haven't really seen anything worth taking a pic of in my wandering around... but I wanted to make a post anyway... so I took the camera out in the yard to see what there was to be seen... and here they are in no particular order... This is the street view of my cactus bed in the front yard. The purple coneflowers self seeded a few years ago, and I just left them. I have dug a few out for friends, as they were shading out the rock garden to the right in the pic...
and here's the view from the yard....

here's one of the Texas wildflowers that came up in the yard and I've been very carefully mowing around... I'm gonna take the seeds off of this and scatter them in a better location for next year. It's a Mexican Hat or Black eye'd susan, or prarie coneflower... I think it depends on who's telling you about them...

Next is a Pavonia hastata... AKA rock rose. This small flowered relative of the hibiscus is one of my faves... The bush is a little rampant, and the blooms are small... just shy of 2 inches across... not really that impressive... except the hotter it gets, the more it blooms... a very valuable trait. This bush, in the upcoming heat of August, will be covered with hundreds of these small white flowers when everything else is doing it's level best to crawl under a rock.

The crown of thorns, which I talked about in a previous post when someone abandoned it on my porch just knowing that the local cactus freak would love it... and the Pachypodium...

A little Mammilaria bloom... I forget which one of the top of my head...

And on a corner of the of the front rock garden, an old galvanized bucket that had sprung a leak now is home to a tiny variagated agave, right in the middle, and a Ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense) & all the leaf cutting that fell off said ghost plant when I potted it...

And that's kinda what's going on in the yard right now. Nothing particularly new, but still kinda nice...

Later!

thorns in the mail...

Actually, it started out as a thorny day... I had to do a couple of what I thought would be simple errands, so I called dispatch and told them I'd start late... well, of course, simple errands turned into bizarre rituals, and I ended up missing a day of work, which I really didn't want to do... but when I finally got home, I found three little plants in the mail...

I had sent out the cemetary cactus a few weeks ago, and that wonderful Aiyana had sent me some plants back...

The plant at the top of the triangle is Chamelobivia 'Fire Chief' the one to the right is Chamelobivia 'Rose Quartz' The one to the left is what we believe Echinopsis 'Elegant Lady'

Really, it was totally unnecesary to send me anything. But, these really cheered me up, and for that I'm grateful.

And once I started potting things, I kept going... I started by cutting up a few pieces of fence wood to make a tray. I use these to display little plants that I root up to sell in the Flea Market and I have some to take in next weekend... The first one I made, years ago, surprised me... people want to buy the things! I have no earthly idea why, but who am I to turn down 10 bucks... it's just a piece of fence wood that you find by the side of the road on trash day after a good storm blows through, and an old belt that you cut up to use for handles. Old horse-shoes make better handles, but they're hard to come by.

The boot with plants in it sells well too... something to do with Texas no doubt. Then I planted a bunch of Semperviviums chicks in an old tin can... I'll either use this to size them up to sell or maybe just sell the whole darned thing. There's a very old tradition of Hen & Chicks in old tins, galvanized buckets or enamel pans, growing on front porches...

I then I planted up this Strawberry jar...
I collect pots from rummage sales, and I like to plant them up, but I really don't have room for all of them, so I wait for them to root good and sell them off... I can probably get 15 to 20 for this at the flea market. It would be more than double that at a nursery, but I'm just pulling these out of the yard, so I don't really have any money in them...

And the final pics are of the infamous "Prickly Pear Jelly Cactus"

Looks like I'm going to have a great deal of fruit this year...

So it turned into a pretty good day after all...

All sorts of stuff...

When I'm working... I supposed to be chock full of all sorts of customer service skills...

And, I'm usually pretty good about it... I smile alot, I'm chock full of yes ma'ams and yes sirs, and I even laugh at tired one liners... but today for some reason I wasn't quite able to muster it up. I tried. I kept telling myself to just smile and get on with it... but I'm afraid all I was able to manage today was a semi-polite indifference.

We all have bad days I guess...

Part of the reason is that the summer heat is starting to hit right after 2 really wet weeks and it's humid out there... I felt like I was walking through soup. But I did manage to stop by the side of the road for some wildflower pics... I thought it might cheer me up a little. Didn't really work, but it was a nice break...

Here's some Indian Blanket, or Galliarda. It always amazes me when I see these in seed catalogs.

And the next two are Yucca filamentosa blooming in a field of Coreopsis...

I also stopped in a city park and saw a Duck and ducklings...

And when I got home, the Prickly Pear had it's first bloom open today... of course it was closing up by the time I got here, but you get the idea...

And really that's about it....

later!

Storming outside...

And it will be all day tomorrow too...

way too much rain. I know that some of my potatoes have already rotted in the ground... this is Texas... We're supposed to be dry, right? Actually, 2 weeks of rain as spring turns into summer is typical here... not quite monsoon, but close enough for me!

This morning, before the rain hit, I stopped by a tailgate sale... It's a fairly new phenomenon in the states, but I understand that "Boot" sales, (boot being what the British call the trunk of their cars) have become quite the rage in the UK. The way it works is that you load the trunk of your car, or the back of your pick-up, take it to a parking lot where a whole bunch of other people have loaded up their vehicles, and sell everything in it... The result is a bunch of people cleaning out their closets mixed with a bunch of people who deal in flea markets for a living, selling stuff. Kind of a condensed rummage sale. Usually the person who owns or controls the lot charges a fee for the sellers to park... anywhere from 10 to 20 bucks.

Anyway, I didn't really find much, mostly because I wasn't really in the mood to buy... I was just there to avoid mowing the lawn (didn't work by the way, I still had to mow when I got home) but I did find these little guys...

Here's the story... (bear in mind that it was being told by the guy who was trying to sell them...) The guy grew up in Arizona, and these cactus grew wild at his Mothers house... when he moved to Texas he brought a plant with him, and everytime we get a rain storm, some little pieces break off and he roots them. He said they were called Boxing Glove Cactus. They'll grow a bit, then form a 'Fist' on top, then more little branches will come out the side and do the same thing... and so on and so forth...

Well, if the story and description he gave me is accurate, it's the monstose form of the chain cholla, or Cylindropuntia fulgida var. Mammillata Monstrosa. And while he said he keeps his in a pot and carries it in every winter... it's actually hardy to 15 degrees farenheight, and I can grow it outside here... WOO HOO... they were a buck each so I bought two... one to pot up and bring in this winter and the other to leave outside to test it's hardiness... Supposedly, it can get to 8 feet tall. Hmmmmm

All this rain lately has gotten some fungus going... these actually showed up in my tomato straw bales... I'm not worried about them, they help decompose the straw into somethng the plants can use. And they're kinda cute...

The straw bales are actually working out well in this rain... they do retain water, but they drain well enough to avoid the root rot that plauges gardeners this time of year here...

And my annual battle with these little critters has started... CACTUS WEAVELS!


I've always called them cactus weavels. I don't know what they actually are... all I know is that they show up every year and the pierce the pads of my prickly pears to suck the sap and in the process make them look like this...

See those ugly yellow dots? NOT ACCEPTABLE. They won't kill a plant, but they will weaken it. And once a cactus is scarred, it's permanant. This happened when I tried Grandmas method of dried garlic on the roots to make the plant unpalatable to the critters. It works with most plants, but it evidently doesn't work with cactus. So back to insecticides... I tend to use Pyrethrin, simply because it's less toxic to people and pets than most other sprays. It's made from the leaves of English Daisy, if you have some of those around, you can actually make a tea and produce your own. I don't, so I have to buy it...

If anybody out there knows the exact name of these pesty things, and a totally organic method of controling them, please tell me! These plauge the prickly pear that produces the fruit Mom uses to make jelly every year! And don't tell me to pick them off by hand... you can't pick them off without wearing gloves, and they don't make gloves that allow you're hands enough dexterity to pick them off... God knows I've tried!


Later folks.