Rain Water Collection

Work on the rain water collection system has been going slowly. Friends have been busy so moving them has been impossible with just Lyn and me. Also I just had no idea how difficult it would be to level them to the first tank. I had no illusions of perfection but thought I could keep them within an inch or two so as not to lose too much of capacity. The plumbing has been extremely difficult and has changed from my first concept of how it should be.

The inlet hole in the top of the tank is only 1 1/2". Where the water comes out of the gutter is 4". You don't have to be too bright to figure that the four inch line would have to be attached to several of the 1 1/2" lines or water would be lost. That was my first plan but after hooking up the first tank I could tell that the weight of the PVC pipe would need supports. Sometimes it is better to just start over and that is what I did.

This is the first configuration.

I really didn't like this as I would have to have a line to every tank. It finally registered that I could just drill a hole in the center of the top and put in a larger line. I already had a 4" hole saw bit so I went with 3" PVC as the outside of the fittings are 4" and it would be a perfect fit that I could caulk to keep mosquitoes out of my water. The unused 1 1/2" holes would be the over flow holes and I could easily put screen wire over them for mosquito protection. It is also a little easier to do the plumbing as I can get by with only having the inlet line go to three tanks.

I now have three tanks hooked up to receive water. The new hook up looks like this.


All I have to do now is level off 50' more ground, shovel in a lot more sand, move and level five more tanks and do the plumbing only on the bottom of them, and then I can start on the pump and filter house. I'll keep you posted.

Too Many Goldfish

The big goldfish give-a-way got rid of about seventy goldfish. It helped but was no where close to the number we need to move. Lyn has been running her trap line several times a day getting the little ones out and moving them to some tubs in the back. The tubs make for easy extraction when we find a sucker, errr, I mean someone who needs fish. We called Hill Country Water Gardens and asked them if they wanted any little goldfish and were surprised to learn that they needed fish in some of their ponds. You can see in the picture there are a lot of little fish in the buckets. I would guess a little over a hundred.

The fine folks at Hill Country Gardens are some of the nicest folks around and I didn't mind helping them out as they were helping us out as well. I would say that there is at least a hundred more that will have to come out of the big pond so if anyone out there needs any goldfish just let me know. They are in all colors, most but not all fantails. Other wise they are going here.

More bugs

I was playing with my dog this evening and seen a red and black streak go by, close to the ground. I immediately ran for my camera. I had wanted to get a picture of one of these wasps for a long time. It was a Tarantula Killer. It's a huge wasp, second in size only to the Cicada Killer for wasps in central Texas. This one was almost two inches long. They have bright red wings and an evil black body, the kind of black like a Black Widow spider. Like all non nest wasps they are very non aggressive. Even though they will take other spiders, Tarantulas are their main prey. They only take the male Tarantulas as the females are just to big for them to fly with. It's hard to believe that this wasp can fly while holding onto it's prey that is several times bigger than it is. However I know this to be true as Lyn and I got to witness it at our house when we lived in Liberty Hill. We had been working in the garden and were sitting on the porch steps, resting and enjoying a Shiner. I saw the Killer looking around and under the rocks that made up our walkway. I started to explain to Lyn about them when suddenly the wasp went under a rock and drug out a Tarantula. He had a hard time of it. When they were out in the open, the fight was on. It actually looked like the spider was winning for a while. We noticed that the spider started to slow down in it's movements. The wasp flew off. I thought, what's going on here, you kicked his butt and now your leaving. I have learned since then, the wasp was checking on the hole that the spider would go in. A little while later the wasp returned, flipped the spider on it's back, folded it's legs together neatly, grabbed onto the legs, and flew off, low to the ground. I felt that this spider was about as big as this wasp could handle as it could barely fly with it. You see, the wasp didn't kill the spider, it merely paralyzed it. If it had killed the spider it would rot before the egg that the wasp would lay on it, would hatch. The wasp stuffs the spider into a hole, lays an egg on it and covers it up. When the larvae hatches it eats the paralyzed, but still fresh spider. [This is where the much more computer savvy, Philip, at ESP blog, would insert a picture of the guys in the Alien movies all trussed up, but still alive] Think about this, for every egg that the wasp lays, it has to risk it's life fighting a much larger prey. I like 'em.

Gardening Gone Wild Down Low

I had to crawl through a lot of Petunias to finally get a shot I liked. I'm telling my wife that the dog mashed them down. This is my first time to enter this photo contest. It sounded like it would be fun and it was, certainly a different view. Here is my entry.

Watch out, it's a Vinegaroon

A friend dropped by today, recently back from a hog hunting trip in the panhandle. No hogs. His group was staying in an old house on the ranch. Just after he went to bed he felt something crawling on his foot. He turned on his flashlight and saw a huge bug on his foot. He jumped up, screaming like a little girly man. Everyone got up with lights and then they found a bunch of them. Whip Scorpions or Vinegaroons [Mastigoproctus giganteus] are not poisonous but they are ugly and big. He told me everyone slept in their trucks the rest of the trip. He scooped one into a coffee can and brought it back with him. He knew I would want pictures. He tried to catch a big one but couldn't. The one he brought back is a medium size one-he says.


You can see the whip tail here. They sling a vinegar like substance out of it, hence the name.
You can see that it has two pincers on each forward arm and both work. They use them to catch bugs as they are strictly meat eaters. With the penny in the picture you can tell it is a very large bug. Although it looks like a scorpion and is called a scorion, it really isn't a true scorpion. It's an interesting bug none the less.

You don't see one of these every day

A gentleman [I can't remember his name] in my native plant club has one of the animal rescue operations. After our club tour here earlier in the year, he asked me if he could release a Ringtail close by the house here. There was everything that he needed to survive, especially the water in my ponds. I thought it over and decided it would be okay even though I know he will get some fruit off the trees next year. They are really cool little animals and I like the idea of having one around even though I think he is eating tomatoes to survive right now. I was pretty sure I saw him scurry off the other night from right at a tomato plant. Their main food source is berries and seeds, especially Hackberry seeds but they eat fruit and veggies as well. With this drought I'm sure my garden is his only food source.

When checking the next morning I found this.


I don't really care though. He couldn't put a dent in the damage the Cardinals do. Here is a picture in the animal carrier before he was released. As you can tell by the huge eyes, Ringtails are almost completely nocturnal and this is probably the only picture of one I'll ever get.

Rain today and I was ready

I awoke to rolling thunder this morning. Shortly after hearing the first boom I could hear that wonderful sound that rain makes on a tin roof. I rolled over and went right back to sleep. That sound always puts me to sleep and I knew the next couple of hours would be sound sleep before I had to get up. I just had to check the rain gage before I left the house and there was already an inch showing. We ended up with 1 1/4". By noon you could hardly tell it had rained. The ground just absorbed it all and could have taken in more. This evening all the plants looked so good, as only rain water can do. By dark there were bunches of new blooms on the cantaloupe vines that had hardly been alive hours before. Rain water is just special for the plants. Rain water makes plants grow and my well water just keeps them alive. And in some cases, not.

The best part about this rain was the fact that I was ready for it. I had the first tank of the rain water collection system all hooked up. It wasn't easy, as the plumbing part got tricky. It was plumbing as an art form. The first tank will be the hardest though as it is the one that hooks up to the gutters and eventually to the pump and filter house. I checked this evening and it was almost half full. Insert big smiley here.

This is what I was looking at when we went to get the tanks. See the crates of granite in the way. They were supposed to be moved and we were going to be able to load them with their fork lift. Well, neither of those things came to pass. We had to load the eight I bought by hand, laying them over and rolling them up onto the trailer. In the heat it was a killer. It took three loads to get them all here. It cost me a serious lunch for the guys and beer. It's really nice to have friends that will help you with this big of a project even when the plans change like they did.
PEC, the local power company, gave me a pole they had just removed. I laid it on the ground to hold back the sand that I would use to bed the tanks with. I was able to dig it into the ground so that the top edge was dead level for it's full length. As I progress down the line of the tanks I will always have a constant to use for leveling. Billy was able to bring his Bobcat skid loader back and move the sand to behind the pole. Lyn and I leveled a spot big enough for the first tank. I then shot it with my sight level to determine that I could maintain that level all the way down the seventy feet that the tanks would set. To move them from the front of our place down 1,800' of really windy, steep up and down drive way, I borrowed a small trailer from Billy. I had to build a ramp for the back of the trailer to roll the tanks up. It turned out to be not as difficult as I thought it would be to move them back.

The first tank is in and I've started to play with the plumbing. The tall, light blue thing is the roof washer. It was there already from the first set up. A roof washer catches the first several minutes of rain water before it goes into the tank. That helps keep the debris out of the tank. I built this one out of 12" PVC. It has a 4" T at the bottom with a faucet and a clean out. It worked so well with the other tank I decided not to change it.

Here's a view from the other direction. You can see the pole and the sand behind it. You can see a wire sticking out of a conduit next to the vertical pole. I put that in when we built the house. I planned that far ahead for a rain water collection system, as I wanted one that bad.
As I said, the plumbing got difficult. And maybe just a little artsy. Being a welder and not a plumber, it was mainly difficult.


However, the first one is installed and has an end cap duct taped on it so that I was able to catch the rain water that fell today. I'm a happy man. Now seven more to go.

Blooms in the heat

Work on the rainwater system has ceased for a while. The heat is just too much to get friends out in. Not many of my friends work outside like I do so they might keel over in this heat. I don't want to use them to death. I might need help in the future as well. The garden has needed some mulch added anyway and irrigation to some of the raised beds needs work. It always seems like there is some little something that needs doing. It also seems like there is constant watering as well. I am watering every other day but only do half at a time. Normally I don't water on to the plants, but now I am spraying the plants down as well as giving them a good soaking. The spraying, I think, cools them down. I am definitely going to consider even more natives and heat hardy plants in the future. I think there is a difference between heat hardy and drought hardy. You can always water but you can't do much for the heat. When we have this many days over a hundred and such low humidity, no plant can live up to its potential. However, there are still some blooms here at Draco.

The Shrimp Plants, both maroon and the green, could care less how hot it gets as long as they have a little shade and some water.



The Zinnias that I plant every year do fairly well in the heat but miss a day of watering and they are gone fast.



Another one that blooms through the heat is Society Garlic.


These are the kinds of plants we all need more of. The first is one type of Hummingbird Plant and the next is Mexican Honeysuckle. Neither have had as many blooms this year as in previous years but have had some blooms on them all through the heat.



This Skeleton Leaf Daisy is one of the most heat and drought hardy of all my plants. It is ever green and with its weird looking leaves, looks good with or without blooms.


Although the Passion Flower vines have withstood the heat well, they have not had nearly as many blooms this year as in the past. But that is true of most of the plants.


This next one has been a surprise star performer this year.[pun intended] I have moved this Texas Star Hibiscus several times through the years trying to find the place that it would grow. Last year, while touring the Pond Society Tour, I noticed some people had them growing in their ponds, and with great success I might add. After building a bog pond last winter, I planted it there where its roots would be wet all the time. It has had more blooms by far this year than in any other year. I think it is finally home.


The next three plants were all given to me by customers of mine. In some ways I don't like given plants as they might not be plants you like or plants that don't fit your garden. I always feel obligated to plant it and try to make it grow. When I give plants I always tell the receiver that if they don't like it to simply pass it on, it will find a home sooner or later. The first is an Ice Plant. I only received a sprig. I have a hole in a big rock that I have planted several different plants in without much luck. I stuck the sprig in the hole and it has surprised me by growing well and has had a few blooms.


The next one, a customer that has become a good friend, gave to me. I really didn't want it because I knew that I would have to put it in the greenhouse every winter. My Mother moved truck loads of plants into and out of her greenhouse every fall and spring. I vowed that I would never do that. My vows may not be too reliable though as I really like this plant. It is right out in the blazing sun and requires no more water than any other plant. It is also just stunning to look at. I'm not sure which Plumeria it is but it's a beauty. It has been blooming all summer.


This last one is the strangest of all. It was given to me by the lady at the feed store after Christmas was over. I mentioned how it was so terrible all the Poinsettias were going to die in a week or two because Christmas was over and everybody would just throw them away. She handed hers to me and said "Well go grow it then". I took it home and put it in the greenhouse till winter was over and planted it in a bed. I was so surprised that it really grew well and put on lots of new growth after it nearly died in the green house. The heat doesn't seem to bother it at all and it doesn't seem to need a lot of water either. I was going to read up on how to force bloom it but my dog ran over it yesterday and broke it off at the ground. I will gather all I can this Christmas. I think they will look good in a mass planting even without their blooms. Blooms meaning colored leaves with these.