Fall is Flannel Time

I've been pretty excitedly waiting for our 3 barbados cherry shrubs to bloom, ever since I saw them beginning to bud. Their flowers a quite nice, with a sweet scent and bright red cherry to follow.

I rushed over yesterday evening to see if the flowers had begun to open, to find this fantastic caterpillar hiding under one of the leaves. This, my friends (ahem, to quote John McCain), is not to be touched, brushed against or manhandled in any way or another.

So far as I can tell, it's a flannel moth caterpillar (either Megalopyge opercularis or Megalopyge crispatus). I believe we call them "asps" in Tejas. Apparently, it's one of the most toxic caterpillars in the U.S., and if I were to have accidently touched it, I may have experienced:

an immediate onset of excruciating, unrelenting pain, radiating to the lymph nodes in the armpit or groin, and then to the chest. Though rarely a true medical emergency, these symptoms have the feel of a serious, life-threatening event. It is common for victims to visit emergency rooms

All fear aside, check out this punk's mohawk!

The caterpillar is buried down in all that downy fuzz somewhere. The hairs themselves aren't poisonous, by the way. They are concealing the toxin-laden spines spiking out from the caterpillar's body. This will turn into a pretty fuzzy moth.

Anyway, my barbados cherries still aren't blooming, but they are very close (see photos of the buds about to burst open). Our cherries are still very small, just planted last year, but I hope to shear it into a topiary some day, much like Philip has done over at East-Side-Patch. In the photo below, his sculpted barbados cherry, also known as "acerola," is just left of the nice red chair.

Dalea Deluxe

Hey Austin Garden Bloggers! It was great to see you all this past Sunday. Thanks for your kind comments on our Grackle garden, and for the seeds, citrus, candles, wine, transplants and pups. What an amazing, kind group of people, eh?!

So, some of you were asking about the "dalea tree" in the front yard. My best guess is that this is a Silver dalea, Dalea bicolor var. argyraea, but I'm not sure it even totally matches what I have, which is now about 7 feet tall. If anyone has any better guesses, let me know! (I'll see if I can post some better pix of it soon.)

Austin Blogger Eve

A native fall aster - not sure which one

Here's the great thing about 2008: I'm garden blogging from the garden itself. Ain't wireless grand? It's 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, and the autumn light couldn't be better. As the sun sets to the west, the long shadows and light shine like spotlights changing across a stage. Tonight, the Texas Longhorns play Missouri, and the game starts in one hour. Small planes fly overhead carrying banners, telling us to go to the "Yellow Rose" and etcetera.

Petunia

The grackles are grackling. They've begun to congregate en masse and call their crazy caw. I wish I had my field recorder here to share the sounds. The new fountain (I'll show you that someday soon) is gurgling the afternoon away. Perfect.

Mexican oregano

Tomorrow, the Austin garden bloggers come to tour the Grackle garden. And yes, I'm kind of nervous...I've never had so many people come over just to see the garden. I've tried to follow Pam and Digging's advice not to worry too much. Seriously, I only primped and fluffed a little bit. But it's fall and time to do some of that anyway.

Cutleaf daisy

The temperature here in Austin is perfect. For many people, it's why they live here. 75 degrees. Blue skies. Grackles. What's better than that?

Texas betony


Turk's Cap and Mountain sage (below) await the migrating hummingbirds

If you have an agave, you know that they produce pups like a poor old dog stuck in a puppy mill. For some reason, nurseries around here can still get away with selling agaves for way too much money. I've got a ton that I've dug up to offer to the Garden Bloggers when they visit the garden tomorrow.

Squirrel Nut Zippers

Squatting in front of a black plastic seed tray this past weekend, as I filled 24 finger deep holes with potting soil and the seeds of cilantro, collards, kales and lettuces, I kept hearing this strange “chuck chuck” noise above my head. I turned. The sound stopped.

I resumed my careful planting task, and the chucking resumed. I turned. The sound stopped. I saw no trace of the chatterer and chalked it up to a Widespread Panic hangover.

And then, it dawned on me that I was probably being berated by a squirrel, most likely of the eastern fox variety (Sciurus niger), tawny on the underside and (sometimes) cute.

This year, I’ve noticed an amazing wealth of squirrels zipping about the yard and bounding along the fence lines, almost always with a pecan held between their tiny jaws. They are on a furious (and frustrating mission) to (a) store and move their precious pecans, and (b) tear my yard to pieces in the process. At least they are leaving the house alone, thus far.

There are way more squirrels in my yard than I’ve seen in a long time. Perhaps there was a population spike after the critters were ferried here by kind citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike? Maybe they are responding to a call from Austin’s spiritual squirrel vortex?

It’s more likely, though I don’t have any hard data, that last year’s rain and awesomely abundant pecan crop gave those squirrels some extra baby-making energy. And this year’s large population is an echo of that time of abundance.

It probably doesn’t hurt that there’s a lack of natural predators in the city, despite our occasional hawk. The neighborhood fat cats don’t do any good either. They’d probably share their food bowl with a squirrel if it didn’t give them too much trouble. No, I’m afraid the squirrels’ largest predator in the city is the car.

Surprisingly little research has been done on urban squirrels, but I did learn from Robert McCleery’s thesis at Texas A&M that fox squirrels in urban areas prefer live oaks over pines, bald cypress and arbor vitae. Live oaks, thank goodness, are in no short supply in our fine city.

McCleery also found that most city slicker squirrels die a quick, flat death by car tire. This is in contrast to their country kin who die the old-fashioned way, in the jaws of coyotes.

Anyway, the squirrels are driving me nuts this year. They're digging up my potted plants. They’ve dug little holes beside every single transplant I put in the veggie garden. They’ve nipped the tops off the fennel. When I plant seeds, they sneak through the hog wire cages and grub their noses down into the furrows and generally mess things up.

Now, don’t get me wrong, squirrels can be real cute—sprawled out on a tree branch trying to stay cool in the summer or perched with their question-mark tails nibbling on a nut—but this may be the only time I would have occasion to wish for more cars on the streets.

I hate to sound heartless, for I truly am an animal lover, but when you have a garden or a farm, it’s easy to feel that sense of competition with other creatures over common resources. Planters and plowers alike know the strange pleasure of squashing a caterpillar or decimating an aphid. And I think I can empathize just a little bit when ranchers feel threatened by wolves and coyotes.

Maybe that’s what that squirrel was thinking too as it saw me bent over my little plastic seed tray.

“Don’t you go putting your seedlings into my pecan garden,” it was thinking. “Back off, you silly industrious human. Chuck chuck.”

Trippy Signs

These absolutely amazing graffiti art signs have appeared in our neighborhood over the last 6 months or so. I just think they are the coolest, and someone has put some serious time into them. Sure, it clouds the Crime Watch message, but creativity and surprise overrules any objections in my opinion.

Their trippy, blacklight-poster sensibility is just wonderful, and I love the strange natural elements that appear in them, from fish to owls (hoot, hoot!). Even cooler on the owl front is the skeleton, as if the lights of a passing car have suddenly gone x-ray and shown us the inside of this predator flapping quietly across the street.

So cool!

A Smattering of Purples

OK, so not much as been going on in my drafty, dry, hot-ass garden over the past couple of months. But, I did spy these two purple beauties showing me their stuff. The top is a society garlic that I just transplanted in spring. One flowering stalk ain't bad after that stress. The bottom is Mexican sage, also transplanted in the spring. It's shadier in the new spot, but it is flowering nonetheless - all silvery and purple. Loverly.

October Veggie Garden

This weekend marked planting day for the 2008 Fall veggie garden. The shadows are getting longer, even if it isn't really that much cooler. But, fall/winter gardening for veggies is one of my new favorite things: fewer bugs, less watering and yummy greens! I just couldn't resist getting started and my notes from last year say now is the time to do it. I've decided to hold off on collard greens for a month or so until it's cooler (there were caterpillars that feasted on those last year at this time, and I think that waiting 'til it's colder might be better in that regard).

I planted a bunch of transplants this weekend, all from Natural Gardener. I'm going to start planting seeds this week for various other things.

Here's what I planted so far:

• broccoli (packman x2, premium crop x1)
  
• mustard greens (x3)
• kale (toscan0 x2, russian x1)
• fennel (Italian x2, bronze x1)
• fernleaf dill (x3) - these grow smaller than the monster I planted last year. it'll be interesting to see which one does better, especially with the onslaught of swallowtails
• cilantro (x2)
• Italian flatleaf parsley (x3)
• scallions (x3 bulbs)
  

I'll be planting a bunch more stuff from seed, like beets, arugula and lettuces, and will report on that later. I'd also like to plant strawberries and sweet potatoes. But the above transplants should give us a good start.

And we still have basil growing like gangbusters, but it's really wanting to flower now despite all my pinching and clipping. I'll probably turn the bulk of it into pesto soon and throw it into the freezer to use throughout the winter. (If you've got good eyes, check out the little black ants sucking on nectar and/or munching on pollen. They like their pesto, too.)

I had a paltry turn out with the okra, Clemson Spineless (Go Tigers!), this year, but that's not for lack of good okra-growing heat. It's because I didn't try (translation: I didn't water them). I just threw a couple in a perennial bed and let them do their business with no extra love. The seedpods are uber-cool. This is the first time I've ever let them go to seed too.

I also have several new mint plants that are doing well in pots: spearmint, peppermint and a nice, flavorful mint called "orange mint" (that one, in the foreground, is gonna make some really great cocktails someday soon!).

When I was potting that last mint this afternoon, I poured the Vortex potting soil out into the terra cotta pot and got a big surprise: a coastal toad came tumbling out with it! I probably would've been scared shitless if I would've put my hand down into that bag and met the likes of this squirmy bag of fragile bones.

How handsome is that toad?! Damn, nature is cool. I hope he stays around and fills up on his fair share of roaches (yep, they're still around, and it's October!).