Lawn Ornament: Giraffe

Pretty cool, though still not as good as the baby Pegasus in Tipton.

I'm a little unsettled by the bird nest in the giraffe's neck. Birds will be birds, though. Probably unavoidable.

I tried googling to see if I could find out anything more about the piece, but nothing came up. Worse, I was pretty lost when we happened across this, so all I actually know about it is that it's in a pretty nice neighborhood in Iowa City somewhere. You'd think someone would have said something about a life-sized (?) giraffe in Iowa City before this. Maybe it's new. Maybe Iowa Citians are just that jaded about art. Maybe there was an even bigger rhinoceros two blocks away that hogs all the attention. It's a mystery.

Grab Bag

Various mostly-seasonal items today, just 'cause.

Not quite a lawn ornament, technically, because it's not intended to be permanent (the season and amount of deterioriation suggest a Halloween decoration), but close enough. More people should have monsters in their yard. I think it would be good for everybody. (Especially the monster-facsimile-production industry.)

Speaking of monsters: it's poinsettia time again. Ugh.

The previously-mentioned Cryptbergia x rubra flowers have begun to open. I'm underwhelmed. The color isn't even as strong as on Billbergia nutans: both the green and the blue are washed-out. (Admittedly, this is also not a great photo, but the flowers are paler in reality than I was expecting.)

Speaking of the Billbergia nutans -- which has gotten enormous since it arrived two and a half years ago -- it has a flower spike developing on it. I'd really like for it to produce more than one of those at a time, for photographic purposes, but I suppose there's still time.

I have previously reported being unable to smell Freesias. I could smell this particular batch, though. To me, they smelled like Froot Loops, which may or may not be standard. (One person described the smell that way in the previous Freesia post, so . . . possibly.) There may also have been interference from other flowers on the table -- there were tuberose (Polianthes tuberosa) and cyclamen and I'm not sure what all else. But so I may not be genetically incapable of smelling Freesia after all. Which I guess is a good thing.

It may not be easy to see from the picture, but what we have here is an artificial tree, constructed around a mechanism that blows tiny styrofoam balls up into the air above the tree, so that they fall down on it like snow. Some collect in the branches, some stick to ornaments via static electricity, and some fall down through the tree to the base, where a pump sucks them in and blows them back up through the tube again. I would have loved the fuck out of this when I was a kid. I bet it's also super-entertaining for households containing static-prone black cats that like to climb things.

The down side: they're expensive. Just the mechanism alone is $200, and then you have to buy a fake tree to cover up the mechanism. It also requires a large floor area, so all the styrofoam balls can be collected (though I bet you some of them find their way under the couch regardless). And of course there's the part where it's hard to decide whether it's cool, or kitschy, or so kitschy that it loops around and meets cool from the other side. I mean, tiny non-biodegradable styrofoam balls pretending to be snow, being propelled into the air by an electric motor that probably ultimately gets its energy from burning coal, so they can fall on non-biodegradable plastic pretending to be a tree! It's so early-21st-century!

Kitsch or not, I want, like, five of them, so I can point them all at one another and have a tiny styrofoam blizzard down in the basement whenever I want. (I suppose it would have to go next to the peat bog.) Anybody who wants to donate $1000 to make this possible should do so via the donation button at top right. I promise to take lots of pictures.

Top 12 PATSP posts of 2010

Once again, I wait to do the year-end retrospective until after the year is actually over.

The husband: But you're supposed to do those at the end of the year, when you're looking back. The beginning of the year is supposed to be about looking forward.

Me: Well yeah, but how can I say they're the best posts of 2010 before 2010 is over? I mean, maybe I'll write a really kick-ass post for December 31.
[pause]
Not that I did. I'm just saying I could, and then it wouldn't be on the list, and nobody would know about it, and even I would probably forget that I'd written it, but even if I remembered it and put it on the 2011 list, it wouldn't be the same because it's on the wrong year's list, and in the future somebody who's combing through the debris of our civilization after the apocalypse has happened will run across my blog on some server somewhere and they'll be all like, wow, this guy must have been brain-damaged or something: he's got a post on a "best of 2011" list that was written in 2010, no wonder the zombies got him, and I DO NOT WANT PEOPLE CALLING ME STUPID AFTER THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE BECAUSE I DIDN'T DELINEATE YEARS PROPERLY, OKAY?

The husband: Oh. [pause] Okay.

Anyway.

Last year I came up with sixteen favorite posts; this year, either I sucked more, or I had higher standards, 'cause I only wound up with twelve. (Actually, it's neither, I think: I was reasonably fond of most of the plant profiles I did this year, but I figure the main purpose of writing these lists is to call people's attention to posts they might have missed, and the profiles, though I work hard on them, already have links in the sidebar and get read regularly regardless. I did include my very favorite 2010 profile, but I didn't include all the profiles.)

So without further ado.

12. Pretty pictures: Paeonia cvv. (28 May 2010) I still don't necessarily like peonies all that well, but I really liked the way this particular photo turned out:



11. The One About Plant Theft (20 July 2010) Sometimes people will steal plants. Does this mean people are terrible? Yes. Yes it does.

10. Pretty pictures: Passiflora spp. (11 July 2010) This has very little to do with the pictures (though they're nice) and everything to do with me being proud that I managed to come up with an argument that Passiflora flowers are actually all about the TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," instead of the crucifixion of Christ like everybody thinks.



9. Random plant event: Hoya lacunosa flowers (17 January 2010) Mostly me going off on the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day participants for not having a sufficient number of houseplants, something I'm tempted to do again this winter. (Instead, though, I think I'm going to try to get it together to participate.)



8. List: Houseplants Which Could, In Theory, One Day Produce Something Edible, Perhaps (5 October 2010) May or may not have been one of my best posts of the year (though my preamble, with an eight-item list of disclaimers, is certainly the acme of something or another), but it attracted lots of comments.

7. Lawn Ornaments: Frozen Water Balloons (6 January 2010) This post has been weirdly popular with people who don't otherwise read PATSP: I've seen it linked to from a number of non-gardening websites, which surprised me. Plans to build on the idea this year by constructing a multi-colored back yard ice-block fort have been hindered by the lack of suitably large and durable containers in which to freeze the water. I'm still hoping to figure something out, though.



6. Pretty picture: Vanda Pakchong Blue (20 April 2010) Included because this is, upon review of all 2010 posts, my favorite photo from the whole year.



5. List: Houseplants You'll Want to be Growing During the Zombie Apocalypse of 2014 (5 March 2010) This was also extremely popular with non-gardeners (lots of zombie enthusiasts out there, it turns out), but gardeners liked it too. (Enough that one of them may have ripped off the idea, which I find bothersome, though I can't prove it was malicious.) And it won me a Mousie, which means a lot of you knew about it already and you want me to move on to the next one on the list. So I will!

4. Being Robin Ripley (8 April 2010) PATSP's contribution to the Ugly Vegetable Garden War of 2010.

3. BREAKING: Dog Adoption Complete (25 March 2010) The very first Sheba-related post that included pictures. You knew there was going to be a Sheba picture somewhere in this list.



2. Carmen Miranda (Ananas comosus), Part I (17 June 2010) I made an exception to the general no-plant-profiles rule for this particular post, for the simple reason that I will never again write a footnote that's as perfect as this post's footnote 5, and I will not stop telling people about it until everyone in the whole world knows.



1. Book Review: Hothouse Flower, by Margot Berwin (30 September 2010) I read a book once and found it unsatisfying.



What will the best posts of 2011 be like?

Probably quite a bit like these, actually. But we won't know for a year, so keep reading.

Lawn Ornaments: Frozen Water Balloons

This didn't quite work out as intended, but since I went to all the trouble to do and photograph it, damned if I'm not going to at least squeeze it for whatever blog post juice it might contain.

I borrowed this idea from an anonymous friend. It's pretty simple. You get a bunch of balloons, put a few drops of food coloring in each balloon, fill with water, tie off, and then leave them outside to freeze. When frozen, you pop the balloon, which leaves you with a rounded blob of colored ice, which you then arrange in an artful and decorative pattern.

So it's basically a technique for making your own temporary, winter-only gazing globes, I guess. Kinda.


Mine didn't turn out as intended. I had set them down on the ground in the back yard to freeze, next to one another, and although it got very cold on the night in question, they apparently managed to insulate one another well enough that only the tops froze: the bottoms stayed liquid.


This left me with a bunch of pastel, bowl-shaped pieces of ice, instead of the solid, brightly-colored spheroids I had been envisioning. Also disappointing: the balloons, when popped, immediately gushed water. I was trying to be careful, but I still managed to soak a glove while I was doing this, which was uncomfortable and inconvenient. A wet glove sticks to ice in sub-zero temperatures much the same way a wet tongue sticks to a metal pole, it turns out.


However, there was one good side to this: the colors, disappointingly pastel though they were, were at least all more or less equally pastel, so they still looked like they more or less went together, and the inverted-bowl shape reflected light interestingly, giving them a more metallic kind of look than they would otherwise have had.


It would have helped if there had been less snow on the ground when I did this, since from a distance, they kind of disappeared under the snow around them (which is why I didn't post any pictures of them from far away). But these are all lessons I can apply to next time. (Yes, I am planning a next time.) And I at least got one cool-looking photo out of it:


Oh! And! I also, in the process, managed to ruin one perfectly good laundry basket. It turns out that the maximum carrying capacity of a chilled plastic laundry basket is exactly five water-filled balloons. Tempting though it might be, don't add that sixth one: the basket handles will break on you, sending five water-filled balloons skittering around the plant room. The sixth will, of course, land on your white tennis shoes and burst, both soaking them and turning them lavender.

Lawn Ornament: Metal Llama

It's possible that this is not technically a lawn ornament, since it wasn't exactly in these people's yard, but "yard art" sounds too pretentious, and "driveway entrance decoration" is clunky, so we'll go with "lawn ornament."


This is located somewhere near Montpelier, IA. Or possibly Fairport, IA. Somewhere along the stretch of Highway 22 connecting Muscatine and the Quad Cities, in any case. I figured I would remember without writing it down, so I didn't write it down, and of course I don't remember.

It was very obviously one of those things we had to back up for so I could take a picture: you don't see these every day. I can't imagine how much work it must have been. For all the roughness of the design, it's pretty closely-observed: whoever made it definitely knew what a llama looked like, down to the eyelashes and the correct number of toes.


I know I'm just raising a bunch of questions and then not answering them: I don't know who made it, or why, or how much it's worth, or why it's a llama and not, like, a camel or horse or something, or who owns it, or anything. But I thought it was still something you needed to see. It's maybe not pink-and-blue Pegasus good, but still pretty awesome. And you'll notice they've got Christmas lights strung up on it, which I have to imagine adds to the effect, though we did not stay to see it.

Best Lawn Ornament Ever

I mentioned this one in a previous post, but we actually made a point of going back to Tipton last Thursday so I could get a picture of this. Prepare to be awestruck.


Yeah, that's right. It's a pastel pink and white pony. With wings. On a pastel blue something or another. The colors are slightly more vivid in person. Like with the giant spider at the link above, you know there's an interesting story behind this. And I did kind of want to find out what that story was, but . . . how to even ask the question, you know? It's obviously awesome, but I'm not sure I'm appreciating it in quite the same way as the owner(s). Could be awkward.

The husband and I racked our brains on the way home trying to think of ways to make a lawn ornament that was even more over the top; words like "with lipstick" and "airbrushed" and "rainbow colors" figured prominently in the discussion. Also we're pretty sure that it'd have to be a unicorn instead of a pony. Rhinoceros at the outside. And if there were some way to work in some glow-in-the-dark paint somewhere, that'd be good too.

The rest of the lawn, incidentally, was disappointingly normal-looking. Some people spread a thin layer of whimsy on everything, and others concentrate their whimsy down into a thick, sludgy paste and cake it on one very specific item with a trowel. These people are in the latter category.

The Opposition

It's my understanding that Iowa City doesn't have a really huge problem with Japanese beetles, at least not yet, not as much as we're going to. There's only so much one can do about it. I've been, on occasion, going through the roses, grapes, and hibiscus at work, picking beetles off and then stepping on them, but of course it doesn't really make that much of a difference and it's too much work to be particularly emotionally satisfying, as far as that goes. I don't know if we're doing anything more than that to deal with them, though. I don't think I've ever seen, or heard of, anybody spraying anything other than herbicide (we do have weeds, in spots) on the nursery lot. Though perhaps we ought to.


The rabbits are more of a problem: they're capable of eating a lot more, they've been with us for a lot longer, and there's less we can do about them. I saw a whole family of them a couple days ago: two adults and one baby. They don't seem to be increasing in numbers, exactly, but they're not particularly under control, either. Maybe it doesn't matter: I don't think there's anything we could do to keep them out, and for obvious reasons we can't really have bear traps nestled among the pots of hydrangeas or whatever. As far as it goes, I don't know for certain that they're doing any real damage to the plants. I just assume they're up to no good.

And what do they need such good eyesight for? Hmm?

But anyway. Back to the pests. We don't usually have a lot of spiders, but the ones we get are often pretty good size.


This one ate one of the nursery lot guys in June.

No, not really. I took this picture in Tipton, Iowa. I was curious about the story behind it ('cause you know there's got to be a story of some kind behind it), but a little too shy to ask. Tipton's good for weird lawn ornamentation: while we were there, I also saw a pastel pink and blue winged horse, like a big "My Little Pony" but winged, concrete, and sitting in somebody's front lawn. It was a so-wrong-it-must-be-right kind of moment. If and when we go back up there, I'm going to find that horse and take pictures, because y'all need to see it. I feel really dumb for not getting pictures when I saw it in the first place.

Notable omission: I meant to get a picture of bagworms for you, but couldn't come up with one fast enough. There are issues with them, too, in certain isolated spots, mostly on the lot landscaping (as opposed to the items for sale), as far as I know. The nursery lot guys are on top of it. On the plus side, no whitefly (yet), and no aphids (anymore), so hooray for us.

Pretty pictures: Iowan roadside flowers, and a large wad of metal

The husband and I went southwest down to Sigourney, IA, a week ago,¹ and I was kind of shocked at how many things seemed to be blooming along the side of the road. I guess it hadn't occurred to me that summer was necessarily a bigger time for that than spring, but it pretty definitely seems to be.

Anyway.

So I know some of them, but there are a few that I can't identify, and one of the NOIDs has been bothering me for several years now, but for some reason it only just occurred to me to ask the internet. I suppose because I didn't have a picture until now.

(I've also thrown in a few other plants that I didn't see on the trip, because they're also weedy and they fit this post better than they could fit another one later.)

So, Iowa roadside stuff. I suppose we should get the obvious one out of the way first:

Zea mays, and Zea mays, and Zea mays . . .
Not really amber waves just yet, but still. That's a whole lot of photosynthesis there, my friends. Oxygen!

Asclepias syriaca, the common milkweed.
I've always liked milkweeds. The leaves get no attention but are actually quite nice. Somebody should slap together a tropical version of these that can be grown indoors.

Or maybe not. "Yeah? You got mealybugs? Well listen, buddy, I'd kill to trade for mealybugs right now. I got monarch caterpillars all over my bed, my toothbrush, the kitchen sink; chrysalises (chrysali?) blocking the air vents and dangling over the toilet; and we can't even watch TV anymore because as soon as we turn it on, all these butterflies jump up and fly into the screen. So I don't even want to hear about your mealybug problems."

One of the NOIDs.
Very patchily distributed. Maybe a deliberate planting. Damn pretty in large quantity.

Rudbeckia hirta, black-eyed susan.
Not a good picture, but I don't like black-eyed susans well enough to care, apparently.

A chicory (Cichorium intybus) flower.
These were everywhere in certain areas, which surprised me: I don't remember seeing them as a child, and I grew up not far from Sigourney, so it's a puzzler. I remember violets, asters, milkweed, plantains, red clover, white clover and dandelions; surely I would have noticed chicory, had it been there.²

Another NOID.
This is the NOID that's been troubling me. Again, I don't remember seeing it as a kid, and yet now it's everywhere -- large stretches of I-80 are lined with it on one side of the road or another. Occasionally both. It's such a vivid yellow that I can't imagine how I would have missed it all those years. So is it new? Invasive? What is this thing?

UPDATE: Julia, in comments, says it's the birdsfoot trefoil, or birdfoot deervetch (Lotus corniculatus), which does appear to be the case. I'll be back to add to the post again if I can find out anything about what it's doing in Iowa.

Another NOID.
This one sort of looks related to the yellow NOID; they both produce small circles of flowers, and they tend to grow in the same places. If I remember right, though, the foliage is completely different. So maybe not.

UPDATE: When I was watering perennials yesterday at work, I saw that we actually have this for sale. It wasn't in flower, but the foliage looked right. Turns out it's crown vetch (or purple crownvetch), Securigera varia, which is found in most states of the U.S. and is a problematic invasive in some of them. So why are we selling it, when it can be invasive, and when anybody could dig some up from along the side of the road if they really wanted some that badly? Bless me, I have no idea. I'll have to ask the boss, or somebody, if anybody actually buys it.

NOID.
When I was a kid, I remember being told that this was an aster. The actual botanical genus Aster has been split up, with Old World species retaining the designation Aster and the New World species getting shattered into a half-dozen or so other genera. So I don't know what this is, but I remember seeing it as a kid. Lots. The bees liked it, as I recall.

UPDATE: Well, it's an Erigeron of some kind, probably E. annuus, which is known to be in southeast Iowa and is a pure white. There are other Erigeron in Iowa that are supposed to be slightly pinkish, though I can't say I've ever seen anything like that. Thanks to Frances for the tip.

Verbascum thapsus, the common mullein.
I like this plant. I see these particular specimens on my way to work every day, but the species seems to be common around Iowa City.

Another NOID.
This was also one I saw on the way to work; the flower didn't last long, and turned into a dandelionish puff of seeds. I feel like I ought to know the name, like I did at one time or something, but I got nothing right now.

Ostrich ferns, Matteuccia struthiopteris. Pretty sure.
I took this picture because I think these are resprouts from disturbed ground: they're alongside of a house in a town near here (Wellman, maybe?) that has, for some reason, had all the ground around the foundation dug up. These appeared to be coming back from roots under the soil, or maybe the original plants were just covered up, not torn to pieces. Not sure how it works. All I know is, I've heard ostrich ferns were tough, and now I believe it.

Large wad of metal.
This was a large wad of metal sitting in a field near West Chester. What is it from? Why is it just sitting there? Is this, perhaps, Art? We do not know. There was some brief discussion of how we might heave it into the car and take it home with us, or offer to buy it as scrap metal and then try to pawn it off to someone else as sculpture, but practical considerations prevailed. Also it's actually more interesting, attractive, and likely to give a person tetanus than a lot of art I've seen, which made the whole thing seem less workable.

If you know any of the NOID plants, or if you'd like to bid on the giant ball of twisted rusty metal (what a garden ornament it would make!), sing out in comments. Or, you know, keep it to yourself, if that's how you want to be.

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Photo credits:

¹ (To look at an empty library. Sort of a long story.)
² I know: stop calling you Shirley. Wilco.