Ready for Ignition

These 'Thai Hot Dragon' chile peppers are great. After turning from green to orange to red, they take on a heat that is 8 times more intense than a Jalapeno.
Some of the peppers are crinkly, and have almost no flavor or heat. They seem to die on the plant and dry before getting any flavor. Any suggestions as to why this is happening?

The wedding photographer

A wedding photographer at work last Saturday outside St Andrew's and St George's Church of Scotland, Edinburgh.

MidWest Mountain Bike Fest

Today was a busy day the the mountain bike fest. The day started with a pancake feed sponsored by the Eldridge Lions Club. Needed the food and coffee to get started. The breakfast was served at the Sac-Fox campground site - convenient for all the camping festers.

Next was MtB101 workshop. I want to give a SHOUT OUT for the instructors - Ray Nees and Becky Barnard. This was the best presentation of building mountain bike skills I have ever seen. I should have brought my bike this morning and participate in the class.

MtB101 was a logic progression starting with basics like pedal location, attack position, looking up the trail, et al. Each participant learned riding: a large stick, stick & log, skinny, short drop, log bridge, teeter-totter, and combo with ramp ending with logs. On the naugabike web site I will spend more time detailing the workshop (with photos).

Also in the morning group rides were heading out to ride the other trails FORC maintains in the area - Sunderbruch Park, Sylvan Island, and Illiniwek Park. Others stayed at Scott County Park for group rides. I positioned myself on Long Grove Loop to take photos of the some of the groups.

By this time, it was lunch and then heading back to the hotel for some horizontal time.

By the time I got back to the park, it was about time for the games. Billed as the "Not Lame Games". There was the ever popular "Huffy" toss, followed by Bunny Hop, and "Dodge Tire".

There were more games, a cook-out at the camping area, beer potluck, movies, and night ride. Just a bit too much for this old body. I headed toward the hotel, picked up a Blizzard, and settled in for the night.

Watch for my fest photos on my photo web site: http://win-photo.photoreflect.com

Minnie-Moo's Challenge

Minnie -Moo was bored one day and decided to go to http://www.faceinhole.com/ for fun. Now check out Minnie-Moo's site for your own Face-in-Hole!!! http://theminnieblog.blogspot.com/. Then follow the directions and have a pawsome time!
Happy Tuesday!
Licks xo,
Sammie
PS: Thanks to all of you who participated in Monday Captions!

Green Screen

Those of you with larger lots may see little need to plant trees and shrubs for privacy, but where houses are crowded onto quarter-acres, there are some of us who find a green screen is not just a nicety, but is essential for sanity. Two pecans, probably planted in the late 1970’s, shade the right half of the back yard.

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When we first hauled our 100-plus pots to this house in the summer of .., that part of the yard looked and felt leafy and private, but late that fall the leaves fell, revealing not only the bare boughs, but the surrounding roofs, walls and windows. This depressing vista proved that almost everything along the fences of our adjoining yards was deciduous – pecans, crepe myrtles, ash trees, oaks, tall Mockoranges… even a magnolia ID’d as evergreen turned out to be a deciduous saucer type instead. So the next spring we added some broadleaf evergreens along the back fence, and also planted young trees on the treeless left side of the yard. When we’re sitting outside, it's not exactly our own little kingdom, but the loquat helps, and the six-foot ‘privacy fence’ makes a good background, and the greenery will fill in eventually.
While we’re waiting for that sense of enclosure to develop, let’s see how tall everything is now.
Our idea is that once these crepe myrtles get their crowns above the fence line, they’ll soften the horizontal line of the wood, and their irregular branches will break up views of roofs and house walls. The tips on the left one stretch to 6’ 6” now, and the right crepe myrtle has just hit 6-feet. By the end of this summer we may be able to tell whether our theory will work.

Halfway between the crepe myrtles is a tiny evergreen with potential. This is Pinus pinea, the Italian Stone Pine. I bought it at some garden club sale at Zilker Park a couple of years ago, and it's supposed to do well here. At the time it was an unbranched sapling, about 10” tall, growing in a plastic tube for $1. Now it has branched out, and reached the amazing height of 17”. This pine is seen in classic Italian paintings, and is the source for pinenuts. Who could resist an Italian classic for one buck?
You've seen our Magnolia “Little Gem’ folded over in the ice photos.
'Little Gem' was measured at 56” last February, and it has grown some, but not much, to 60”. But as you can see, there's more than 4" of new wood on the individual branches: Apparently, when the weight of January’s ice fanned the tree branches outward, some of the height was transmuted into breadth.
This loquat was a foot-tall seedling with a few leaves when I got it in ... It’s been in the ground for over a year and has reached 9’6” tall, and can actually cast a little shade on the patio. It's also branching out, so it's starting to look like a real tree, instead of a sapling.

Diva-of-the-Dirt Buffy gave me another foot-tall loquat seedling in spring ... I keep moving it to larger and larger containers, while occasionally taking off the bottom leaves. This loquat is now 35-inches tall.

We need beauty and fragrance as well as privacy, so we planted a small, evergreen shrub in the Triangle Garden. It's called Texas Mountain Laurel, botanically Sophora secundfolia, from the pea family, totally unrelated to the Eastern Laurels. At 26” inches tall, this slow-grower won’t make much impact for awhile, but it has a few flower buds!

In this photo from .., you can see what we hope for this spring.
We had three mountain laurels at our previous Austin house, and took a closeup of the beautiful, fragrant purple- blue flowers. The fragrance is described as grape Kool-aid or grape bubble gum.
It might be easier to catch the fruity fragrance once the flowers are at shoulder level rather than near our knees.
Do any of you grow Michelia figo, also called Banana shrub? It’s related to Magnolias, and the small flowers really do smell like bananas. I bought a one-foot, one-gallon plant in fall .., so at 38-inches, it’s done well, but will have to do a lot of growing if it's going to reach the fence top. Off to the right there are two unseen evergreen shrubs, a 40" Loropetalum, and a 30" Podocarpus, sometimes called Buddhist Pine.
Last February I remembered to measure the camellia and recorded it as 55” tall. So what happened – a year later it measures only 54"!! Since the branches show new growth, I guess this is another case where the shrub is now growing outward instead of upward.

Philo estimated the larger Pecan to be 40’ tall, and it's probably been here a quarter of a century. But we don't need our plants to be 40-feet tall - eight or ten will do, and we like watching things grow, so we'll try to be patient as we wait for our green & private Eden to develop.

Stage 04

My tropical garden in September of 2006, very different from its start in July. It has seen the addition of four plumerias, a colocasia plant, a peace lily, a king palm, elephant ears, and alpine strawberries. When the banana was purchased in July, it was about two feet tall, and is now at least twice that height.

Moreton Bay Fig

The gigantic roots of two very old Moreton Bay fig trees.

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth , Hemaris thysbe, nectaring on Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica).
They are sometimes called hawk moths, and are in the same family as those most unwelcome guests, the tomato hornworms.
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Thysbe (Thisbe) in myth: the Greek version of Juliet.
One web source suggests that Hemaris comes from the root haem (blood), but another says it derives from the Greek hemera (day). See here.
A hornworm on your viburnum is probably this species. Leave it! It won't eat much. And it turns into this enchanting creature.
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I wondered whether this moth's wing motion was the same as a hummingbird's. The second photo would seem to suggest it, but I couldn't find confirmation on the internet.