These first two images show one of our favorite plants of all time: the horse-crippler cactus (Echinocactus texensis), also called pincushion-cactus or devil's footstool. Blooming season lasts only a few days, but spine season is perennial. I've read that it takes twenty to forty years of growth before one of these will put forth flowers. Skeptical, but provisionally amazed. Skunks, coyotes, pigs, and very hungry people enjoy the fruits that will be forming here shortly.
Harvester ants also enjoy the fruits. And I love harvester ants about as much as anything else that lives. I watched the workings of our biggest harvester ant colony yesterday. It's over next to the second gate coming in our place. I'm telling you where it is because either you don't also like harvester ants--in which case you've probably never been down into this little place in the Creek's canyon--or you do like harvester ants and you won't be inclined to disturb them. Anyhow, they've increased the size of the main opening in the ground, and their population doesn't appear to have suffered any loss. The world is good when harvester ants abound. Now I'm thinking about transplanting one horse-crippler over to their yard. All things stinging and poking are fine by me.
I've included the second photo of the horse-crippler just to emphasize two things. One, the obvious, is the beauty of these spines. But I've also included it here to say something about our drought. Weather people are telling us that we just enjoyed the third driest winter on record for central Texas, with only about an inch and a half of rain. Yet the flesh of this crippler cactus remains healthy. In drier seasons, the down-curved spines will be tilted upward as the flesh dries and shrinks.
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And a few more greenhouse images. We've been pleasantly surprised with the growth of plants inside. Certainly we wouldn't have such a mature stand of vegetables if we had tried to grow them in our many spring freezes and in this drought. Within a couple weeks' time we had freezing mornings and then afternoons in the upper nineties. As long as the thermostat kicks on and the two fans blow cool air from off the floor up into the hanging tomatoes and then out the north end of the house, the temperature inside feels comfortable, even on hot days.
Vegetables grow down either side of the central walkway, trying to fill out the four-by-thirty-foot beds: pimiento peppers, spinach, basil, pole beans, cucumbers, beets (for their leaves, primarily), onions, broccoli (mainly for its leaves in salads), mustard greens, yellow squash, watermelon, cantaloup, poblano chilies, and tomatoes (about sixteen hanging baskets of small tomatoes, and about eight different heirloom varieties planted directly in the beds).
I'll never again underestimate the provisions of a small area. Every day I eat two large salads (primarily from spinach, onions, beet leaves, and broccoli leaves). Next year we should have plenty of tomatoes about this time since we'll be able to start them so much earlier than we did this first year.
As seen in the bottom of the greenhouse photographs below, we've fenced in another area at the entrance to the house, and in it we've planted two four-by-eight-foot beds of flowers.
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| (the cameraman is tilted rightward, not the greenhouse) |
Some interesting patterns on these nice agave plants.
As the leaves of the agave are just starting to grow, they are compacted close to one another, leaving the imprint of each other on the broad side of the leaf.
The plant is also known as mezcal or mescal, lending its name to the Mescalaro Apaches, who depended largely on the agave for food, medicine, and material for making such things as rope.
Agaves will flower themselves to death. What they'll do is spend ten, twenty, thirty, or more years building up great amounts of sugary starch in their heart, and when this has reached sufficient quantity, either Man will tap into it for the making of a fun beverage, or the plant will use this concentrated energy to produce its one great flowering act: an ungainly-sized inflorescence on a ridiculously tall stem. And die. I love this idea.
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| hijo |
But clones of this dead agave will live on in their hijos, or sons. These are the little pups that grow up around the parent plant. I moved half of dozen of these over to the south side of our house where summer sunshine kills everything else. These hijos will themselves continue to reproduce little clones, so that the original plant is said to live for centuries. The century plant.
We've read of many people cutting off the leaves and then roasting and eating the remaining "pineapple" that can weigh as much as a fair-sized child. Tequila, sadly enough, is made only from the species Agave tequilana grown near the Mexican town of Tequila in Jalisco. We'd gladly experiment with ours did we not know that some varieties of agave have been used as arrow poison and fish poison and can cause severe skin deterioration. Ironically, some species make a respectable soap. Fiber from the leaves of Agave sisalana is the source of sisal rope. Soap-on-a-rope. And a hangover.
Oh, and it looks like about half of the blackberry crop has withered off. I don't know if a late frost got the last half of the white blossoms or if the dry weather burned them off. Anyhow, one day I turned around and saw that there were no white flowers on the hundred feet of blackberries. Yesterday I saw many stunted green berries and many brown and crispy once-was flower heads. I drug a hose and pumped pond water on their roots, but the timing may be a bit late.
Might ought to add that the shrinking Pond no longer flows directly into the Creek, but underground first. This is a blog about a creek.
