cats birds and cactus...

First... we got rain! Not much, but enough to wet everything down...

Next... we got dead birds! Phennig was very proud of himself this morning and brought this home. I can only hope it's the mockingbird that has been pecking holes in my tomatoes...



And now, we got Leuchtenbergia principis, also known as the agave cactus...


I saw this somewhere... I've been wanting one for a while, but I hadn't seen one to buy. Actually, the only one I'd ever seen in person was at the Ft. Worth Botanic Garden, through the windows of the greenhouse... so when I saw one in a big box store, I grabbed it.

I know it doesn't look like a cactus. It looks like an agave. But those leaves aren't leaves... they're the plants tubercules.

We all know that some cactus produce ribs of spines, and others produce bumpy tubercules. These are tubercules taken to an extreme level... to the point that they look like leaves. They'll get up to 6 inches long, and the entire plant can get to 2 feet tall... This is the only species in the genus, but the genus is very closely related to barrel cactus, and they can produce intergeneric hybrids referred to as Ferobergias.

And those spines aren't half as mean looking as they appear either... they're papery.

And that's as exciting as it gets around here.

Have a great weekend everyone!

how I spent my morning...

I finally got fed up with my neighbors non-mowing situation, and had to take matters into my own hands... Weed grasses were encroaching into my relatively new rock garden. Not acceptable...


And what's that hiding in the grass?

It's one of those viscious killer predators that terrorise the surbaban jungles!

And here's how it finally turned out.

No, it's not the best job, and it is a little chewed up, and it's not how grass should be treated, but it ain't mine and I don't care...

about 15 minutes after I'd finished, who should show up but the new owner next door... he asked what was up and I told him I'd just mowed part of his lawn... And he apologised profusely.

He hasn't moved in yet, because there's some work that needs done on the house before they do... and he'd hired somebody to mow once a week... evidently the idgit has taken care of the front yard but not the back alley... he then asked if he could borrow the weedeater before the other neighbors went haywire.

Hey, it's cool. I don't particularly like yard work, but I don't HATE it. And at least you can look at it and know you've achieved something... of course, Phennig (the cat) is infuriated at me now. It seems he thinks I won't let him have any fun.

So I started today by taking my morning cup of coffee out to my lathe house, where I was poking around the plants in the cool of the morning, and I suddenly felt something on the top of my head... turned out to be Phennig, reaching through the lathe and trying to claw my scalp.

Little booger...


The 5 little Ferocactus wislenzeni I ordered from ebay came in the mail today... in an envelope, padded with waste paper, recycled packing peanuts and loose dirt...

And most of the peanuts are those biodegradable ones, the ones that dissolve in water... and these got just damp enough to get all sticky and gooey and stuck to each other, the envelope, and the plants... really, you'd think the guy would at least have wrapped them in paper. Not entirely happy... but they are 2 inches tall and about that wide (if you count the spines) and they did get here... I'll try to get some better pics after I get them cleaned up and planted/potted.

right now... I'm waiting for my ride to get here so that I can pick up the truck.

That's right... I'm gonna be mobile again... Hide the children, I'm loose!

Random stuff...

I didn't have anything around to merit a real post, but I did have to let everybody know that I was still around, so here's some random pics that are in the camera... thought I'd go ahead and post them before I deleted them...

This is Spectre... (yep, another black cat. It's been a theme since I was a kid. Grandma said 'If there's a black cat within a mile of that boy, they'll find each other!' ) Spectre is a cat that wanders the neighborhood and has decided that sleeping on top of my shade-porch is a good thing... I have a love-hate relationship with random cats... On the one hand they can cause a certain amount of trouble. On the other hand, if there aren't any cats in the neighborhood, there are rats... given the choice of cats or rats... I'll take the cats... Spectre is nice enough, as long as you don't get in her face. She tends to watch me a lot as I work in the yard, but I can't get within 6 or 7 feet of her. She may tame up eventually though...
This is the Pereskia aculeata v. godseffiana that I saved from Home Depot. I had it in a previous post when I first got it... Pereskias are cactus, even though they have leaves, and aren't succulent. The godseffiana is the more colorful cultivar of the plain green standard species. Normally, the plants bloom in the spring, but there is sometimes a second blooming in the fall... since this didn't get to bloom in the spring, I'm hoping I'll get a couple of blooms about October or November. He was barely hanging on when I first got him... but now he's recovering from the chain store... It's almost enough to make you break out into a chorus of "We Shall Overcome"

These are a couple of Scissor-tail flycatchers that I snapped when they were perching on the fence at a warehouse I delivered to... These are the state bird of Oklahoma, but they're common through Texas too... This is probably a mated pair. They hunt by sitting still till they see a bug, then swoop down and attack, a process refered to as 'hawking,' so often when people see them, they think they're seeing some type of barn swallow. However, the scissor-tail can hover in place for short periods, about 5 seconds, which I've never seen a swallow do.

And here's Phennig, sitting in the yard. He seems to be giving me an opinion on what he thinks of this unmowed grass. Obviously, I'm going to have to get to work.

And that's about it for the moment.

Mom came to spend the night yesterday, and left today about 2 PM, so I spent the rest of the afternoon doing yard work... specifically the front yard. The alley still isn't finished, but it's an alley, the front yard is what everybody sees and it desperately needed some attention. After about 3 or 4 hours, I'd achieved quite a bit, and then, since the sun had softened down, I decided I would take some pics... Not much new here, and they're in no particular order, but I was more having fun than anything else...

Here's the Sweet Williams, in full bloom now...

And here's the M. sonorensis ssp. craigii, even though the blooms were bigining to shut down for the night...

And here's Phennig, keeping watch for any mockingbirds in the curly willow tree ...

And this is a shelf that I rigged against the fence in the back yard... it gets the perfect amount of sun for the cactus & succulents, and as rough as it looks, it still looks better than the bare fence... It'll do until I can get something better there... you can see some Agave americana pups that I've potted up on the left. I'm waiting for them to root good, then I'll take em to the flea market to sell for a couple bucks each.

And here's another tray of succulents that I'm doing the same thing with. The Echeverias keep producing baby's and my friends run when they see me with one... so, off to the flea market they go... Not turning any profit on them, but at least they have some chance of finding a good home.

And I don't know if you remember me telling you about the abandoned crown of thorn plant that I found on my front step in a previous post... well, he's been repotted, and he's growing and blooming. Kinda cute... and that's the pachypodium beside it...

And here's on of my Sempervivum's going haywire in the pot tower...

And that's it.

Hope everybody out there had a wonderful weekend!

Later...