Oh, Not More Armadillos

I have had more than my share of armadillo problems through the years, both at this house and our previous house. From my vast experience at the previous house and what I know about armadillos from seeing them all my life, I have tried to make my gardens as armadillo proof as I can. I have still caught several inside the yard and had to haul them down the road. I have trapped a couple in live traps with the "Herd em' to the door V" set up that I devised. I really should patent it, as it is that good.



The middle pond sticks under the fence so that the local deer can water. One armadillo was swimming under the fence to get in. As rocky as the ground is around here I can only imagine just how juicy all my dirt looks to an armadillo. Yeah, the digging is good in here.



I would think with all the catching and trapping and hauling off that there would be no more armadillos for a long ways around. I guess that I just don't know how fast they can breed. Armadillos have what is called a quadranted egg. It takes one sperm to fertilize it but then it splits into four eggs. They are all exact duplicates and are the same sex.



It's hard to get a picture of an armadillo. I have had poor luck doing it, especially with as many as I've had here. There has only been one posted on this blog and it was a back end shot as it was disappearing into the Greg's Mist Flowers. Well I've gotten lucky. Here is a picture of an armadillo, in all his destructive glory.
But wait, what's that moving in the brush? Not another one.
Who would believe, two armadillos in one picture. But wait, what the heck?
This is unreal, three armadillos in one picture after only getting one picture in the last ten years. Way cool. But wait. Oh my gosh, here comes another one. Now there is four of the destructive little bull dozers.
Even though they look to be mostly grown, I am sure it must be a litter that is sticking together longer then usual as I've seen much smaller armadillos rooting in the woods all by them selves. Even though I know I will have to be dealing with them eventually when they find the house, it was still nice to get to watch four armadillos rooting along through the woods along my driveway.

What Time Is It?

Why, it's cactus time. This is the time of the year that all the cactus bloom at Draco. Not all are in the gardens, but they are on our place. Unfortunately they are a lot like iris in the fact that they don't look all that impressive for fifty weeks out of the year and are real stunners for a couple of weeks. Out of the two I would take the cactus. They just fit me better.

This is one I dug up on a ranch I hunted down around Ensinal. It's a stunner.

My Cholla was given to me by an old rancher out west of Lampasas. He had one on either side of the walkway to his house. They were like trees, twenty foot tall trees.

The Claret Cup Cactus came from the same Lampasas county Rancher. They are also called Strawberry Cactus and the fruit is shaped and colored like a strawberry and, while not tasteing like strawberries, is very good eating. The yellow inside is so bright it almost loks like there is a light shining in it.
Here on our place, there are Horse Cripplers, Lace Cactus, Nipple Cactus, and Prickly Pear Cactus. The Horse Cripplers almost never bloom here, and I saw none this year. The little Nipple Cactus and Lace Cactus made up for it though.

These are pictures of Nipple Cactus. The blooms look raggidy to me, but beautiful none the less.

The Prickly Pear never have a bad year and it's a good thing as so many animals feed on it. It is great fun just going around and looking into the blooms and on the pads to see what kind of little critters are there. The pollen output of cactus is ginormous. The bugs in the blooms are just covered in it, making them look yellower than they really are. At this point, my buddy Philip at ESP blog , would insert a picture from the Dune movies with the "spice" every where.

I saved my favorite for last. The Lace Cactus grows all over Draco. There must be thousands of these friendly little cactus around here. I say friendly because you can handle them with out getting stuck by them. I've asked a bunch of people to tell me what they are reminded of when they see them standing so proud and every one of them has said the exact same thing. I won't go into it here but if there is a pepper called a peter pepper because of it's looks then we should rename this cactus. Just saying.

The blooms are absolutely stunning and they produce more blooms for their size than most of the other cactus. This cactus also lends itself to use in gardens very well. Even when not in bloom it is a very attractive little plant and as I said, user friendly, so you don't have to worry about kids around them.

Ol Blush

The Ol Blush Rose has really put on a show this year. The rain has been just enough and at the right time so all the roses look good, but the Ol Blush is just spectacular.

You can see wire mesh I've had to add to the outside of the fence to keep the deer from eating it.

I wish I could add aroma to these pictures as it is on a par with my Don Juan rose for sweet smell. I would grow it just for the aroma but it is a beautiful rose as well.
I always get two good flushes of blooms a year and some times a third in good years. There usually is a few blooms on it between flushes as well. If you have a gate top or arbor, it is a good plant to use.

Finally Finished Walkway

Patience is something every gardener must have. It seems we are always waiting on something. Waiting to plant, waiting to harvest, or waiting for blooms, we are always waiting for something. I started this walkway in the winter of 2008. I got all the way to the last rock and didn't have one. The last rock is always the hardest as it needs to fit in a finite space. That space has a shape as well, so the last rock has to be sized right and be shaped right. I now have hauled enough rock in to almost make another walkway, just looking for that perfect rock to fit "the space". The walkway is now complete, a year and a half later.



This is what the area looked like before we started.

The walkway around my raised beds had gotten to this point the year before when I ran out of rock. I used a string level to find the amount of fall between the high ground and the lower ground. With that information I could get an idea of how many of how thick of rocks that I needed to make a good transition down the slope.The first job is looking at your rocks and deciding which rocks you want to use where. The second job is hauling the rocks closer into the job. The Chief might be little but she's got heart. She insists on helping with all the projects. She's tough as nails but some times get's something she can't handle. Here she looks like she's making good progress, moving this big rock.

If you don't keep up with where your fingers are when the big rock shifts then you get this kind of look on your face.
After that it was up to the common laborer to haul the rocks. Notice that my rock is smaller than the one she was moving.
When I build walkways up a slope I always start at the bottom. I have the next higher rock overhang the lower rock by an inch or so. I bed the rocks in with sandy loam dirt and stomp the dirt down and leave the rock a little high on the uphill side to allow for settling.
This view shows how they overlap a little.
The roses had to be tied back to run along the fence so more rocks could be added. The rosemary got a good trim later.
After finally finding that last rock, here is the rock walkway finished. It looks like Bonnie, the Blue Lacy, really likes it.
We are on to other projects now. Weve started a new bed in the back. Of course there are big rocks involved. I told you, she's got heart.

Bluebonnet devastation

I had a post recently about taking pictures of the kids in the Bluebonnets. There was a picture of a family with the kiddos in the bonnets. I mentioned how careful these people were in not harming the bonnets. Here are some updated pictures of the exact same spot. WARNING, these pictures are graphic and may cause sickening of the stomach.

It looks almost as if someone purposely was trying to destroy all the Bluebonnets on these slopes. How some people can destroy such beauty just to take their picture in the very beauty they are stomping into the ground. I am totally disgusted by this. Here is the previous picture.

My Kind of Bottle Tree

My two nieces are the closest I will come to having a daughter. They are also exactly what I would want my daughters to be like. Their unbelievable beauty is unbelievably over shadowed by their intelligence. And, they are really nice people. They can get just about anything they want from Uncle Bob. One wanted a head board for her bed when she was smaller. She was into Harry Potter at the time and wanted to have a moon, sun and stars on it. You can bet that Uncle Bob would build one for her.


Well now she wants a wine rack. Not just any wine rack but one that will hold six bottles of wine [I didn't even know she drank wine] and has a small foot print because she lives in an apartment and counter space is limited. She was just accepted to vet school at Texas A & M so I thought it would make a nice gift to congratulate her. With anything I build, the hard part is in the design. I thought on it for a couple of weeks with no luck. Then one evening I was looking back through some of Pam's posts on her blog, http://www.penick.net/digging/ and noticed a bottle tree. It had the colored bottles sticking up and out from a post. The design came to me then, a bottle tree for full bottles of wine. After completing it I took it to High Point Powder Coating to get it sand blasted and powder coated. The owners wife saw it and decided she needed one as well. Now I have strict orders to go inside to see if she's there before I bring anything else in for treatment. It's probably time I made some money off of him for a change any way.

The Lady Monster, Part II

I posted a picture last year of a Lady Banksia Rose that grows along the railroad tracks in Liberty Hill. It grows almost completely over an old house and was probably planted way back when the house had paint. I can just imagine that it was a favorite of the woman that lived there. I would bet that she never dreamed it would still be alive and doing so well.

It is now grown to the top of the 50' oak trees where it is planted and spans through those oak trees as well. If you click on the pictures they will enlarge and you can see the blooms all the way to the top and to the far side of the oak trees. Looking at it from the rail road track side, it is hard to believe there is a house under there.

The Last Of The Old And The Start Of The New

Lyn pulled the last of the carrots today, and they were the last veggi's from the fall/winter garden. They are sooooo good, much better than store bought. We must have already pulled up ten times this many all ready. They are just so easy to grow.







While it is the end of one, it is the beginning of the new. The potatoes are all ready up and looking to produce a bumper crop for us.

As with every year we have had these raised beds, there has been a Blue Bonnet come up in this bed. Not several, just one, not any other bed, just this one. I collect the seeds every year so I won't have any in the beds. I guess I miss one every year.

I think this is going to be a great gardening year. Let's hope so.