Assorted things
Back when we were looking for roses, we picked up a few other plants: a shrimp plant, and a blue passionflower. They're both nostalgic flowers for me, as my grandmother used to have shrimp plants in her back yard, and we used to have a blue passionflower vine growing on the trellis beside our carport when I was a child. The shrimp plant we got is a slightly different variety than Grandma had, but it's still pretty.
I had not realized, when I planted the passionflower vine, that they are the sole food of several varieties of fritillary butterflies. A couple of weeks ago, I started noticing the caterpillars, and now the butterflies are hatching out of their chrysalises. We had three our four of them hatch this weekend, and there are several new caterpillars munching away. Hopefully the passionflower vine will grow large enough to provide for all of them without being skeletonized; I am not inclined, in these parlous days, to kill off any pollenizing insects.
Speaking of which, the bees have come back to the lippia. We had tons of them in the yard when the citrus was in bloom, and then they disappeared for awhile, but they seem to have come back. When we moved into this house, back in 1988, there was a tiny patch of lippia nodiflorens (also known as frogfruit, though I am not sure why, as it does not feed frogs, attract frogs, or look froggish in any way) in the front yard. Lippia has, if you aren't familiar with it, fleshy, dark green leaves and lots of tiny white flower clusters. It's one of those ground covers that was popular back in the 50s, and then fell out of favor because it was too invasive or something. (Though I'm fairly sure that it's too dry here for it to spread far if one doesn't water it -- it's drought tolerant, but not THAT drought tolerant.) We had quite a lot of it in our front yard when I was a kid, and going barefoot was in consequence extremely perilous. Sooner or later, you WOULD step on a bee.
In any case, the lippia in our front yard sat there doing nothing much for most of our tenure in this house. five or six years ago, it suddenly took it into its head to start spreading. Now it covers about half the front yard. (The rest of the yard is a mix of Bermuda, dichondra, a bunch of tufty desert grass I don't know the name of, two or three kinds of annual clovers, desert mallow, and assorted weeds which don't fall into the Bad Weed category.* I was reading an article recently on how Lawns Are Bad Because Monoculture, and thinking that our lawn certainly does not qualify.) If I were still in the habit of running around barefoot I might consider this a mixed blessing, but as it is, it's providing much needed bee habitat.
The grapes and the figs are coming along. We've had an unnaturally cool spring, and now summer; it's the first weekend in June, and the temperatures are barely topping 100F. Normally, it's up around 105 by now.
Next weekend we're heading over to L.A. for Whedoncon, and when we get back, the closet project will start. I don't remember if I mentioned it here, but we have a sort of porch/shed area under our existing roof which we're going to have enclosed, and make a walk-in closet for the front bedroom. Really looking forward to that being done. We're probably going to be making the interior fixtures and whatnot ourselves, since we don't need anything super fancy -- just some shelves and clothes rods.
*Bad Weeds: Foxtail, bullhorn clover, burr clover, pigweed, wild mustard, and the cluster of related weeds we call dandelions but which don't look much like the classic dandelion because they are much taller with multiple small flower heads. These weeds either have Painful Seeds, or grow excessively large and eyesoreish if left to themselves. Desert mallow does get excessively large, but it has pretty orange flowers and therefore is allowed to stay.
We watched Good Omens, and liked it a lot, though I have to agree with the reviewer who pointed out that the trope of capable women falling for hapless or unpleasant men for no particular reason could have been done away with, and nothing of value would have been lost. It would have been rather nice to see Anathema decide she could do better than whatsisname, and what Tracy saw in Shadwell I have even less idea. We're all here for Crowley and Aziraphale anyway.
Rants Talk to me
I had not realized, when I planted the passionflower vine, that they are the sole food of several varieties of fritillary butterflies. A couple of weeks ago, I started noticing the caterpillars, and now the butterflies are hatching out of their chrysalises. We had three our four of them hatch this weekend, and there are several new caterpillars munching away. Hopefully the passionflower vine will grow large enough to provide for all of them without being skeletonized; I am not inclined, in these parlous days, to kill off any pollenizing insects.
Speaking of which, the bees have come back to the lippia. We had tons of them in the yard when the citrus was in bloom, and then they disappeared for awhile, but they seem to have come back. When we moved into this house, back in 1988, there was a tiny patch of lippia nodiflorens (also known as frogfruit, though I am not sure why, as it does not feed frogs, attract frogs, or look froggish in any way) in the front yard. Lippia has, if you aren't familiar with it, fleshy, dark green leaves and lots of tiny white flower clusters. It's one of those ground covers that was popular back in the 50s, and then fell out of favor because it was too invasive or something. (Though I'm fairly sure that it's too dry here for it to spread far if one doesn't water it -- it's drought tolerant, but not THAT drought tolerant.) We had quite a lot of it in our front yard when I was a kid, and going barefoot was in consequence extremely perilous. Sooner or later, you WOULD step on a bee.
In any case, the lippia in our front yard sat there doing nothing much for most of our tenure in this house. five or six years ago, it suddenly took it into its head to start spreading. Now it covers about half the front yard. (The rest of the yard is a mix of Bermuda, dichondra, a bunch of tufty desert grass I don't know the name of, two or three kinds of annual clovers, desert mallow, and assorted weeds which don't fall into the Bad Weed category.* I was reading an article recently on how Lawns Are Bad Because Monoculture, and thinking that our lawn certainly does not qualify.) If I were still in the habit of running around barefoot I might consider this a mixed blessing, but as it is, it's providing much needed bee habitat.
The grapes and the figs are coming along. We've had an unnaturally cool spring, and now summer; it's the first weekend in June, and the temperatures are barely topping 100F. Normally, it's up around 105 by now.
Next weekend we're heading over to L.A. for Whedoncon, and when we get back, the closet project will start. I don't remember if I mentioned it here, but we have a sort of porch/shed area under our existing roof which we're going to have enclosed, and make a walk-in closet for the front bedroom. Really looking forward to that being done. We're probably going to be making the interior fixtures and whatnot ourselves, since we don't need anything super fancy -- just some shelves and clothes rods.
*Bad Weeds: Foxtail, bullhorn clover, burr clover, pigweed, wild mustard, and the cluster of related weeds we call dandelions but which don't look much like the classic dandelion because they are much taller with multiple small flower heads. These weeds either have Painful Seeds, or grow excessively large and eyesoreish if left to themselves. Desert mallow does get excessively large, but it has pretty orange flowers and therefore is allowed to stay.
We watched Good Omens, and liked it a lot, though I have to agree with the reviewer who pointed out that the trope of capable women falling for hapless or unpleasant men for no particular reason could have been done away with, and nothing of value would have been lost. It would have been rather nice to see Anathema decide she could do better than whatsisname, and what Tracy saw in Shadwell I have even less idea. We're all here for Crowley and Aziraphale anyway.
Rants Talk to me