Monday, 9 November 2020

GPE #5 : Mitzi Goes Topless!*

* Well, her lānai does, anyway...

Welcome to the fifth garden of the

10th Anniversary  I N F O M A N I A C  Garden Photos Event

  After being teased with litle snippets from Mitzi about her new patio paysho lānai which has been painstakingly constructed at her new home, the Infomaniac Garden Photos Event is thrilled to bring you the first exclusive pictures of this wonder of paving and trellis!

 Although, in a storyline seemingly lifted from a certain defunct British soap opera, Mitzi first had to deal with the property's sitting tenants...

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The previous owners had their parents ashes buried here. 

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That's the lanai finished. My summer house (pronounced "hice") will be ready in January. 
Mr Barrett builds quicker! Wisteria has now been planted in the ground.

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Before. View from the kitchen window.
[Is that a squirrel perched on that wall pillar in the middle of the photo? - IDV]

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That's not a birdbath you see, it's a sacrificial altar for pigeons, for months I've been blaming the neighbours cat for killing birds and leaving a mess all over the place.  One afternoon I was watching a pigeon bathing in it and thinking where is a cat when you need one, when suddenly out of the blue a sparrowhawk came swooping down and took out the pigeon, ripping it's head off, feathers and guts everywhere.
It gave me a thrill like nothing else. 

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These are nifty things: air layering pods I bought from Amazon.  Peel away 1 inch strip of bark just below a leaf node, then scrape at it until you come to the cambium layer then all you have to do is fill a pod with damp compost and click it into place and wait a couple of months or until it has developed a good root system and you will have a new plant for free.  My grandad used to propagate his roses in a similar way, using tin foil and a wooden sprung clothes peg.
 Mine had been on since June.  It was doing fine, it had over a foot of new growth and had healthy roots.  I asked the maid to cut it and plant it in a pot before the gardeners arrive.
 
This is what happened:
 
I could have wept. She has offered to scrub the garden wall with caustic soda and bleach as penance, but so far nothing.

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 Finally, we come to Mitzi's Terrifying Triffidery submission.  I can only imagine/hope it's the handle of some sort of garden implement?  Mitzi was unforthcoming about its true nature - perhaps it's just as well we don't know... 

 

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 Before you go, a bit of music from Mitzi's future husband: Perfume Genius.  One of the videos for his most recent release, "Without You", is set in an undulating grassland with a few flowers and trees - and a mad bint who is clearly high on something prancing around in it - but doesn't feature the man himself, so I've chosen this one from earlier in the year:

While "Describe" isn't particularly horticultural, it does have a leaf blower...

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 Next time on the Infomaniac Garden Photos Event, we shall be ogling the enormous offerings of Peenee and Norma!

32 comments:

  1. Finding pleasure in hawks ripping off the heads of pigeons.
    If those pigeons voted for tRump, they deserved what they got.

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    1. Mitzi does have a perverse kink to her nature, but it's never cruel.

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  2. I love the decadence of all of it - nature's revenge upon pigeons, the dead people under the lanai, the video, the Xmas tree in summer, the glory hole "ribbed for his pleasure", the assassinated rose...

    ...It's Geoff Hamilton meets David Lynch!

    I can't wait for the next chapter. Jx

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    1. The Christmas tree was bought in mid October it has now been planted in the front garden, the envy of the neighbourhood. I was walking up the drive the other night when it was foggy and Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells started to play inside my head, the theme tune to the Exocist.

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  3. You enjoy the pleasure in hawks ripping off the heads of pigeons??? Have you been hanging in the US with Trumps kids?

    That yard is huge...just wait till it's brimming with horticulture next year!!!! And I expected to see Mitzi topless... not all those pricks. I also like that seahorse.

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    1. I suppose it could be interpreted in that way but the thrill I got was seeing a bird of prey in action, right in front of my very eyes, I've only ever seen it happen in wild life programmes.

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    2. "Nature red in tooth and claw". I love it too, Mitzi. Now let's hope the hawks get the squirrels, as well! Jx

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    3. Jon, my garden is crawling with squirrels and the hawk always selects the pigeons over the squirrels.

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    4. Probably because pigeons put up less of a fight.

      One of the neighbourhood cats here keeps chasing squirrels up the tree, but I am not sure it would actually know what to do with one if it caught it. They have vicious teeth and claws. Jx

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    5. I got cut up this summer by the claws of one particular squirrel. It was my fault, and he wasn't being aggressive or vicious; simply curious about what I was doing. I wasn't being careful so it's my fault. Lesson learned. It's no wonder they're not the pigeon's first choice.

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    6. I have a hawk here that shows up from time to time. The squirrels will actually attack him...but alas, he always manages to get one of the mourning doves. When the other birds make flight and leave, the dumb doves never put two and two together. It tis rather a mess.

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    7. @Jon...and what funny once most cats (domestic and feral) go up a tree many don't know how to get down. I just saw a whole nature special on cats. Only certain wild and bigger cats have the ability to do both. Who knew?

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    8. It's probably to do with the fact their claws are a "one-way" utility - hooks are great for digging into bark on the way up, but bugger all use going back down again, whereas true tree creatures (like squirrels and martens and so on) have claws more like daggers. Other creatures like bears and sloths and koalas also have difficulty getting down trees and have to inch themselves arse backwards. A cat would turn its nose up at such indignity! Jx

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  4. I have witnessed a Sparrow Hawk/pigeon event, it is indeed very messy, especially when it happens close to your parked car.
    Jealous of lanai. Though I do have a disused smoking platform in a state of decay.
    Sx

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    1. Forgive my tardiness, I was in the middle of replying when I was called away, a friend had some very urgent gossip to tell me.

      The mess they make is unbelievable, did you swoon like I did? I had to send the maid out with a dust pan and brush.

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  5. To continue with the pigeon vs. hawk theme, my garden is a gathering place for pigeons, to the delight of the local hawks. It's not unusual to find a mess of feathers on the ground after a hawk has zeroed in on a tasty morsel. Just the other day, I spied a hawk from my window, standing on top of his supper of squab.

    Aside from pigeons, I find the air layering pod interesting. It's not something I knew anything about.

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    1. 'supper of squab' sounds mouth-watering. I'm plagued by the bloody things, the next time one flies into my window I'm going to tie string to its legs and swing it around my head in the hope of attracting a hawk come on Kes get yer dinner.

      The air layering pods are a boon I got a pack of them from Amazon for about 7 quid.

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    2. Has the rose shooted again from where it was ineptly beheaded?

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    3. Sadly not, I snipped it off and planted what was left of it in the ground, in the hope that it developed basal shoots, but alas, it succumbed to the dreaded rot, I had the mother rose taken out when they fitted the trellis. I've bought a new one to replace it called Fragrant Cloud. The stem cuttings I took in September, (clandestinely from the neighbours' garden) are showing signs of life. Fingers crossed.

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  6. We want to know about the Vaseline!

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  7. Lovely start to what is going to be an exquisite garden very soon! It's already a great deli for the hawks! I agree about seeing nature in action. xoxo

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  8. Thank you Savannah I do hope so.

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  9. Yes, that's Beady-eye the one I told you about, he likes to plant crab apples amongst other things in the borders. The Triffid picture was taken through the arched neck of my ornamental seahorse.

    Thank you for my lovely video.

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    1. The Vaseline still has me worried and concerned. You weren't try to hump the seahorse were you?

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    2. The empty Vaseline jar belonged to my maid of all work Carmen, she's a diabetic and uses it for her dry and pterodactyl like feet and for anal intrusion. I used it to show the viewer the size of the seahorse, in a similar way a man uses a remote control/Lypsyl as a cock gauge.

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    3. Now that clears things up!!! I use a wine bottle myself!

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  10. The wisteria will be the highpoint of the garden.

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    1. I think you'll find I'll be the highpoint of the garden.

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Tickle my fancy, why don't you?