Jul17

TIGRIDIA!!!!

Posted on July 17, 2014 by heretherebespiders

It’s back and beautiful!

This was taken last evening, when I first spotted the potential bloom:

This morning!

By the time I got home from work, it was folded in and silent – but there are two more buds ready for the morning, I can tell!

I’m so fascinated with this plant. It seems such a shame that the flower lasts only one day, but it is entirely amazing how fast the buds come into flower. This thing should be studied for potential growth-hormone benefits.

Oh! I collected seeds last year, and they sprouted like mad things. While the babies are only a few inches tall this year, I have hopes for next year! I might dig up my whole front patch of garden and plant these instead, I love them so! Can you imagine a field (okay a tiny field) of these in bloom? Wow!

Here’s the question on my mind, though – I get these beauties for just one day, and of course I take photos. Do you want to see these every damn day? Maybe I could do a weekly post – tigridia Tuesday or some such? Whatchoo think?

Jul16

Cartoon Craziness Challenge – Self Portrait with Spots

Posted on July 16, 2014 by heretherebespiders

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My contribution to the Cartoon Craziness Challenge – this week’s theme is a self portrait. I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t making fun of myself, so the original post is about talking in my sleep, Lokii being evil, and finally my getting yet another zit, or spot, at the age of 40. Yes I’m fucking well older than that now and I still get them, so I repeat: what the hell?
Anyhoo, I’ve re-read it, and it’s kinda funny so please do have a look!

So I’m kinda cheating on the challenge, as I already had this drawn years ago. Tough noogies.

Moi, for real (I drew my features from a photo) with a Giant Irish Talking Spot/Zit from Hell.

Jul15

Scaranoctupus

Posted on July 15, 2014 by heretherebespiders

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My summer-fruiting raspberries are now enjoying their second year in my garden, and we are enjoying them, too.

I’ve been picking at least this many every morning. They don’t last past noon, so no chance of me having enough to cook with. We don’t care – they are too tasty to resist!

The birds can’t resist them either. The wee finches and sparrows and tits leave them alone. As do the giant crows and rooks and ravens. It’s the middle sized birds that found my bounty – starlings.

Luckily for me, the day they started to ripen I was asleep on the couch downstairs, just a few meters from the back door (sliding glass type). Spottie cat the mighty hunter saw the robbers and set up the alarum. Okay, actually? He went ‘mehmehmehmeh! ikikikikik!’ at them, and that woke me up. He did sound a bit different though, so I got up to see.

Dammit! I never thought I’d have bird troubles, and had no netting or anything else handy at 4:30 am to keep them away.

But I’m a quick thinker, and came up with a solution instantly. All I had to do was get my bare feet wet in the dew, and the problem was solved!

Neko will just have to live without her huge octopus until the growing season is over.

Jul11

Cat inna Hat Challenge!

Posted on July 11, 2014 by heretherebespiders

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Ah, I don’t normally do these, but I felt the immediate need to draw a cat in a hat when I saw The Indecisive Eejit’s challenge.

Yah, it’s rubbish but I enjoyed the 10 minutes it took to do it – I use the Brushes app and it is ‘fingerpainting’ on an iPad. I can do much better work, I promise – my favourite being Ivy and Stewie. Please, have a look – I promise I’m not usually so… quick?

Jul9

Lilies of the Non-Valley

Posted on July 9, 2014 by heretherebespiders

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Well, hello!

And, goodbye – the orange ones bloom first but just don’t last.

I really loved how symmetrical these yellow blooms appeared.

And a surprise, I think.

Did I have these last year?

I know I planted them last year, but I only remember red-orange ones with black speckles. Hmm. I have a terrible memory, but even hubby doesn’t remember seeing these last year.

Jul5

Slimy… Check. Kinda cute? Check!

Posted on July 5, 2014 by heretherebespiders

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I have potatoes growing in a pot. First time I’ve tried it this way, but I’m sick to death of the taters I never planted coming up year after year in my small vegetable patch. Said patch is nothing but sage and oregano now – with the never-ending, never-able to fully dig out potatoes growing up amongst the uncountable stems and roots.

The ones in the pots were started from the eyes from store-bought spuds that I let get go to long before eating. I chopped those eyes out, left maybe a centimetre or quarter inch of potato ‘meat’ for sustenance, and put them on top of about an inch of compost. Once they started making leaves, I dumped in more compost. Repeat. The idea behind this is that potato plants will grow spuds all up their stem if the stems are buried as they grow taller. Supposedly. I’ll let you know in the autumn if it worked…

I rather slacked off on the ‘repeat’ part in the last two weeks, so this afternoon when I spotted the rounded side of a nice, fat, baby ‘tater emerging from the compost I figured it was past time for a dirt top-up. Then I looked again. It wasn’t a ‘tater!

A big snail had snuggled down into the dirt and under the shade of the leaves (probably to wait for darkness to start its evil plant-munching duties). I plucked it out of the dirt, meaning to toss it over the wall, safely away from my plants.

Something stopped my good right throwing arm; I held the snail, looking at the perfect camouflage sworls and swirls and zigzags on its shell. I removed the encrusted soil from its tightly-pulled-in foot. Then I set it on my hand, to see what would happen.

What happened is that I made a friend.

The damn thing seemed to have a personality!

It had no fear of me, or of cat, or of dog. Indeed, it seemed to be looking at me and saying “Hi!”

“Howr’ye?”

How odd that I want to spend a little more time with this invertebrate. It was really fascinating to watch, and the slime wasn’t a thing like what a slug leaves behind: it washed off right away. What is odder, perhaps, is that I’m pretty sure I would eat this critter. If I had a few dozen of its friends to make it worth my while. Maybe I’ll start an escargot farm! I only had escargot once, but I sure did love it. I like chewy, garlicky food.

Maybe I’ll just keep it around a bit longer, for more photo shoots, and try not to think about garlic butter sauce.

Jun25

About Time I Share Flower Pics, Yes?

Posted on June 25, 2014 by heretherebespiders

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Its been an off year for me, with the planting. I started off really early on my veggies, in hopes that they actually do something this year. Mostly I ended up with a lot of dead seedlings for my efforts.

Then, I was late with starting flowers from seed. Ugh! Most of my new babies are just tiny things, or didn’t bother themselves to grow at all. Luckily, I have a good few that over wintered just fine and have been shouting to the sun their joy at being alive.

My Sweet William from seed, now in year three and showing no signs of stopping.

I might have to stop it myself by deadheading – damn stuff self-seeded all over the place and is smothering one of my blueberry bushes (in a pot).

Not from seed: clematis! Year two for this plant, and sadly it’s hard to see the blooms as it is growing up the grey willow tree and gets buried in the leaves. I took the fist pic with my iPhone – second one was iDJ’s work but I have no idea what he used. His is more true to life colour, but I like mine better because I couldn’t even see the bloom, it was over my head and horizontal so I clicked and hoped for a result. Woot!

Also not from seed, unless it seeded itself – native Irish yellow iris. Most people here would not have this in their garden, it’s rather invasive and weed-like. Don’t care: love it.

Yet another not from seed! I hopped a wall and stole this from the terribly unloved landscaping at the business next door to mine. Seriously, it’s all weeds and horsetails over there. Except for these zinnia! They are very large, 4in or 10cm across. I’d hoped these were Gerbera daisies when I stole them. But I’m not displeased. I’m sure they will love it here!

Roses roses roses… Nothing out of my favourite lavender rose yet: something snapped off the early spring growth and it is only just considering blooming now. But the massive white roses are taking over, the candy-floss pink ones are exuberant, and the darker pink ones are just deciding this is a good year.

Galliardia from seed last year, survived our mild winter but is slow to start. The rudbeckia is all leaf still – but one of those plants is now three years old, too!

The native common spotted orchid is in bloom!

Lilies are in bloom! The orange ones came up first.

But today! Today, we walked out front to see the first bloom on my “black” lilies! I love these so much!

Best thing is that I accidentally learned an iPhone photography trick for flowers. I took a shot of this, and it was so very wrong in the colour. Too red, too orange. So I put the flash on, as a whim – and by golly by jazuz, the real colour came out and said hello! I will be using this again in the future – imagine how that clematis pic would have looked!

Thanks for wandering around my small Irish garden with me!

Jun14

This Might be the Best Photo I’ve Ever Taken.

Posted on June 14, 2014 by heretherebespiders

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If you feed a cow a lettuce…

Jun12

I Annoyed my Cat and I Laughed Like Hell.

Posted on June 12, 2014 by heretherebespiders

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Spot loves to be cuddled under my right arm when we (rarely) settle in front of the TV. His place, every time, is to be squished under my body and covered by my couch-blanket, head and all.

Well. Couch-blankie (crocheted by Socks and much beloved) has good-sized holes in it. Holes that just happen to be the perfect size to poke kitty-ears through.

So I did.

I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard. Poor Spotty-Cakes.

Jun6

My Slimy Nemesis!

Posted on June 6, 2014 by heretherebespiders

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I rarely dislike any critter. Be it vertebrate or invertebrate, warm- or cold-blooded, furred or scaled, no legs at all or a hundred legs.

However. Since I’ve lived in Ireland and discovered my love of plants, I now have an extreme dislike for a certain invertebrate.

The filthy nasty disgusting destroying slug!

Holes in my hostas, strawberries with caverns eaten into the lovely red pulp, seedlings arbitrarily chewed off at the base of the stem. Augh!!!

I have an Irish Wildlife book. It has exactly six pages of mammals for a total of 43, which includes whales (and the bastard American mink an ecological group released from a fur farm and now has overrun the country, due to well-meaning dammed idiots). Rather an astoundingly tiny number of mammals, but it is a small island after all.

The ‘Terrestrial molluscs’ section, on the other hand, has 21 types of slugs and snails. What the HELL, Ireland?!? I know it’s wet and green, but really?

I’m not squeamish when it comes to easily-squished things. I have been known to flail about like a Whirling Dervish when I’ve walked into a large spiderweb in the dark, but who wouldn’t? I have a dislike of ants when they surprise me, and maggots are just disgusting. I have stories to explain both the ants and the maggots. Not today. Today is when I admit to a shudder, a step back and maybe an involuntary sound of horror when a giant-ass-slug surprises me.

They do, they do. After nine years here I still can’t get used to seeing slugs the size of my thumb in my compost bin. Yeeuch! Even better, at the bottom of a pot I want to use. Which is where I found monsters.

I had an olive tree that didn’t survive (not surprised) but I kept it as I could grow snow peas up its dead trunk. Well, I’ve not done that in a few years, so I moved the dead tree, soil and all, into another pot it didn’t quite fit into. It was a nice pot and I wanted it for a more permanent planting. Anyhoo, the tree has been in the temporary pot for a year, and I decided to move it. Picked it up by the trunk, and damn if it didn’t just pull right out of the pot, dirt and all.

And there were huge slugs in the gap at the bottom.

I put the tree back in the pot and moved the whole thing from the bottom, leaving it alone until I could face the slimy suckers.

That’s them. One big sumbitch and one younger version, both Limax flavus, or yellow slug. They look more green to me. It must be because of all the lovely tender plants I feed them! Just look. Nasty nasty nasty.

Me being me, I got over myself and knocked them onto cardboard so I could take pictures. I also wanted to know just how big they are, so I got out the tape measure.

That’s the smaller one – the juvenile. It woke up first and tried to get away as fast as slug-ly possible. I didn’t let it, of course.

While trying to get the older one to wake up and stretch out, I found something even more disgusting. Slugs have mites. My camera wasn’t good enough to get them, but both yellow slugs had tiny cream-coloured mites running over them. Ewwwwwwwwwwwww. They must be pretty specific to slugs, these mites, because how the hell didn’t they get stuck in the slime? I know more about slugs than I ever wanted to know.

Swift had it right:
“The vermin only teaze and pinch
Their foes superior by an inch.
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ’em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.”

I don’t feel that superior. These slugs are unstoppable!

I finally got the older one to unfurl, and it gave me a perfect measure.

An inch, Mr Swift? How about four? Gaaaah!

The book says that is maximum size for this species. But. There is another one that can get up to 25mm in length – almost ten inches long. The ashy-grey slug, Limax cinereoniger. At least this Limax doesn’t come into gardens, otherwise I might actually faint away if I am surprised by one of those.

Oh: I killed them all. With glee, and table salt.

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