the year in flowers

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

2011 in our new garden…

I do love a slideshow.

There is such a gap between tulip time and the flowers of early July.  2011′s tulips were extraordinarily late, and my new baby plants of other sorts were late to flower.  I lacked roses because we did not yet have our deer fence.  2012′s new roses will be babies, so I might have a similar gap this year.  I hope not.

our new garden, the first year

A sunny garden…What a change from the old Tangly Cottage garden with its boggy, shady, cloud forest environment.  I wanted meadowlike sweeps of flowers in the new garden.  (Why do we always think of a meadow full of flowers, of all things!?) As always, I wondered how long before the beds filled in!

15 May, 2011

The big rhododendron which caused me so much uncertainty (keep it? chop it?) bloomed heavily on the house side.  The other side had serious bed head from wind.  I had to admit it was stunning.

I found the perfect “Park” sign at Olde Towne Trading Post Antiques for the entry arbour to the back yard.

entrance to back yard

By mid May, I had discovered that due to the low profile of the double wide home, the north side garden was in full blasting sun!  Imagine NEEDING shade beds when I had come from a garden of 80% shade.  In the back, by the alder trees, I began to create a haven for my shade dwellers.

beginning shade bed

Of course it ended up being a lot bigger!  Smaller is just never with a garden bed, is it?

Living in a dull brown house just wouldn’t do, so Allan started painting in early June.

house colours new and old

Let me just say that if you were my neighbour and you painted your house, say, hot burnt orange, and I did not like it….I would not pester or question you about it in any way.  Our immediate neighbours were lovely, but I heard the cry of “WHY PURPLE!” from down the block.  I simply follow in the footsteps of the many gardeners’ home that in Portland and Seattle are the wildest of  jewel tones.

I returned from the Hardy Plant Society study weekend in Portland in an absolute frenzy of ideas, on a mission to raise the front garden bed.  Until the mission was accomplished, I couldn’t focus on going to work at all!

27 June, raising the front border

By June 30th, the house was fully painted.  Go, Allan!  He is a powerhouse, painting every day when we came home late from work.  How does he do it?

me loving the new house colours

By the beginning of July, I was still waiting for plants to fill in, for the mixed borders to burgeon forth in the back yard.  One day I turned and was gobsmacked by the glory of Clematis ‘Etoile de Violette” blooming over the arbour, back with a pink rose which was one of the the six (yes, only six!!) original shrubs that came with the yard.  (Forsythia, Camellia, Rhododendron, Lilac, Holly, and this rose…)

5 July, rose and clematis

Oh the impatience of waiting for my vision of the Geranium ‘Rozanne’ river to bloom.  By early July, the plants were still…creeping, not leaping.

5 July, still no river of blue

Meanwhile, glorious dianthus and poppies fulfilled that need for sunny flowers that no amount of working in other people’s gardens had met.  Now, at home, in my own garden, I had the plants I had been unable to grow in the shade.

Dianthus 'Coconut Surprise'*

By the 7th of August, the river of blue finally began to show.  I had started with very small plants because I knew I needed a lot of them to replicate Blooms of Bressingham’s glorious river, my obsession since seeing Adrian Bloom’s slide at the Hardy Plant Weekend in 2010.

7 August, a hint of blue

By August 21st, at last, my vision had almost reached perfection…still a bit of soil showing, but close to my dream:

the river of blue

The west and east beds exploded into blowsy billowing cosmos and poppies.  Any structure of permanent shrubs and small trees (and they are in there) will have to wait a year or two to impact THIS annual exuberance.

21 August

During the end of August, a time when work traditionally slows a bit, Allan built the second big idea that I brought home from study weekend: an arbour to soften the boxy front of the double wide.

28 August, new arbour

What is the SOIL that still shows in the front garden?  Again I feel impatience.  I might need to get me one of those signs that says “GROW, Damn it!”

window view, 3 September

The glorious back garden continued burgeoning right through September and into October..as you can see in the view through my window screen, above.  All the flowers I wanted and had only been able to grow at sunny jobs were now mine, all mine.

sweet peas and a baby Robinia

But trouble loomed: The day after I took this photo, deer came in and ate every golden leaf off my little Robinia psuedoacacia ‘Frisia’.  I saw ahead to a winter not of rest but instead the building of a giant deer fence!

The river of blue continued strong until the end of October and slowly petered out in November.  I think it will begin by June in 2012 now that the plants are well established.

Rozanne River, 16 October

My lovely sunny beds finished with a blast of fragrant red pineapple sage.

8 November, back garden

and Geranium ‘Rozanne’ just kept on giving.  No wonder it was the 2008 perennial of the year.

Rozanne, 8 November

By the end of the year after the first three weeks of staycation I had spread 24 yards of luscious mulch (six of washed dairy manure, 12 of “soil energy” mulch) over all of the beds.  The flowers were done, the annuals pulled but some seed stalks left up for the birds.  And Allan had begun the next big phase of the garden: the deer fence.  Note what is gone:  Yes, with a little sorrow and uncertainty we took down the huge pink rhododendron.  As soon as I saw the amazing new view through to the hills at Cape Disappointment I knew I had made the right decision.

26 December, the garden asleep

The mulch made me happy, especially in the front garden where I felt the soil had looked low, hard, and somewhat unhappy.  Hundreds of bulbs had been planted and surely they would enjoy the fluffy, rich new cover.  The tulips now planted in the back yard would appreciate deer protection, new roses have been ordered, and in a week of cold January rains, I’m waiting for a spring and summer of floriferous exuberance.

*Dianthus ‘Coconut Surprise’ and several other wonderful dianthus were purchased at Emerald City Gardens in Seattle; if that’s your town, you are lucky to be able to shop there!  If you happen to be coming to visit me, I could do some virtual shopping and you could bring me a box of plants from expert plantsman Jay Williams.  Just saying!

Next up, I’m pondering a slide show of 2011′s best flowers from spring through fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

looking back on 2011: private gardens

For the last several years, I resolved to work a bit less in order to spend time in our own garden…with visions of barbecues, actually sitting in the garden chairs, maybe a garden party…and then interesting work intervenes.

For the past three years, we have begun in February with a one-off, week long pruning of almost 300 hydrangeas in a Japanese style setting by the bay.

just some of the 300 hydrangeas

The job is always weather-challenged…and after a very few hydrangeas, gets pretty boring.  But the surroundings are lovely.  I will miss it; I think the job passed away when the client did so in midsummer.

also prune azaleas at the hydrangea job...

Not many people get to see the beauty and architecture of the place….

at the hydrangea job....the caretaker rakes this sand...

We care for one garden that is sort of private AND public: a vacation rental house called Sea Nest down a dead end street, right on the dunes just past the Loomis Lake area.

Amazingly, the driftwood “temple” that my former partner, Robert Sullivan, built over ten years ago still stands…after being repaired by Allan when damaged by the Dec. 2007 storm.

Sea Nest west side, March

Since a change of ownership of Sea Nest, we have gone to a more naturalistic, lower maintenance look than the flowery garden of annuals that we had when artist Phyllis Ray owned it.  It fits better into the budget to not have to water weekly, so what you now see is a garden so drought tolerant that we can rely pretty much on natural rainfall to keep it beautiful.

Sea Nest entry garden, summer

Our other private gardens are the sort of lovely secrets that you only see when invited, or when they might be on the Peninsula garden tour.

Jo’s Long Beach garden has been on the garden tour more than once when in its full June glory, but we get to see it in springtime bloom.

Jo's garden in spring bloom

At Marilyn’s up near Surfside, we continued to try to achieve privacy.  The goal was achieved looking to the west.  We are still waiting for shrubs to fully fill in to provide year round blockage of the driveway of neighbours  to south and west who hacked down their sides of the garden (and to the east, encroached on some beach pine branches that should have stayed put on Marilyn’s side of the line!).  While the shrubs take their own time to grow, ornamental grasses do the trick for the west sightline in summer.

Marilyn's, 22 May, with view of neighbours' driveway

Marilyn's, September

Marilyn's in mid-July

At Casa Pacifica, a garden that is so secret you would not even guess it existed, and which is not even on the Peninsula (it’s on the road leaving the Peninsula toward Raymond), we added lots of colour to twelve new whiskey barrels.

Casa Pacifica barrels in spring

Of course, in summer the barrels were planted with our favourite annuals (can you guess? cosmos and painted sage, etc), and we are hoping the narcissi will cycle around for 2012.

The soil at Casa Pacifica is heavy clay, and the water system is iffy because it’s on a well.  The needs of the householders trump the needs of the garden in late spring, so we try to plant very dought-tolerantly, and the garden is at its best in early summer.

Casa Pacifica, thick with foxgloves in June

Casa Pacifica, June

The garden is up on a rock wall on a slope, backed with woods, and the house looks out on it as if onto a theatre stage.

One of these times we hope to bring in mulch, but getting it up the rock wall and onto the garden is going to be a tiring feat.

The latest project going on there is to plant all sorts of ground cover on this vertical slope.

Casa Pacifica hillside project

We’ve got cotoneasters, ‘Point Reyes” Ceanothus, some yellow splashed vinca, a collection of sedums, and lots of small narcissi bulbs in there and are hoping for the best.  It’s about halfway up the long drive to the house, across from the guest house (which has its own set of planted whiskey barrels).

In Ilwaco, we only have only one private garden to care for.  (Odd, that!)  Cheri does some of the gardening herself, and we check up on it a couple of times a month.  Her yellow house will definitely be a feature in the essay on colour that I am working on for my other blog (Our Ilwaco)!

Cheri's yellow house w/red pineapple sage, October

looking down on the painted sage and poppy patch

We made a new area where once was strawberries and poppies…Now painted sage, cosmos, and poppies.  (I’m so predictable.)  Went up on a crane for this one….No, actually, top of the stairways of the over-garage studio.

The saga of reclaiming the woods at Crank’s Roost in Seaview goes on.  I hope I have written about this before.  We want to keep the woodsy feeling, block the view of a big neighbouring house wall (the usual mission!), add more flowers via hardy fuchsias (my pet plan) and have paths that are high and dry in the winter.  The plan is working…

Crank's Roost in June

stunning cones

Just look at the cones on one of the new trees.  Japanese black pine?? (I think.)

Crank's Roost in late August where once was partly a thicket of bog sedge and blackberry

autumn, Crank's Roost

Finally, the true test: the gravel paths stayed almost entirely high and dry in much rain.

Occasionally we do a one-off gardening job.  We did a few days at the quite lovely garden of our good friend Patti in Seaview…a garden which has several times been the beginning point of the Peninsula garden tour.

at Patti's, after we defined the plants around the little pond

at Patti's after a good pruning and weeding session

On just one day, we went to Patti’s rental property.  Next door to it was a former Patti property, a parklike garden that I used to liken to a manicured miniature golf course when it was first installed (before Patti owned it).  Over the years, the shrubs have filled in and gotten a little wilder and the bridges and paths are charming, as was the wildlife, especially since it’s not a garden I have to fret over.

Patti's former property...

...and one of its residents.

Finally, after absolutely swearing to myself that we would take on NO NEW JOBS, we couldn’t resist taking on a scrumptious garden on the bay, one I had heard about for years and hadn’t seen.  Every now and then, I heard of a new gardener getting the job (as gardening businesses came and went) and felt envious because of the great reputation the garden (and its owner) had.  Through the power of Facebook we finally connected and it turned out she had always heard I was too busy!  So despite the problems of scheduling more time, it has been a pleasure to go every other week for a good session at this secret paradise.  It’s been on the tour before, so some of you have seen it.  Those were the years certain gardens of mine were on the tour, so I had always missed it.

the bay house garden in spring

bay house garden

a stream runs through it....

The stream runs from one side of the house to the other and drops from a waterfall into a pool.  I don’t take many pictures there…preoccupied with peaceful grooming of the garden.

the upper pool where the stream begins

All this beauty was designed by the owners, who did the rock work themselves.

There's lots of potential to make interesting paths through the woods behind the garden.

We’re working now on defining the native shrubberies in a new driveway circle at the bay house garden.  Of course, I did add one patch of cosmos to the formal flower garden area, but mostly it is in a different and much more restful style than my usual gardens and is probably the most peaceful one to work in.  The sort of place where one removes pine needles and cones from the moss so that every detail is perfect.

There you have, I think, all of our current private gardens.  As for my yearly vow to not take on anymore…Yesterday while on staycation in my own garden, I was surprised by a couple who came in through the gate.  They had been to both my mother’s and my old garden during garden tours and want us to come and create a flowery garden bed for their place in Long Beach.  Can I resist this? I doubt it very much.

 

(Note: if a photo appears as a question mark…am having some trouble with that…I think it will show up if you click on it.)

Next up: two public garden that I forgot!

looking back on 2011: public gardens

(as one does)

As usual, our favourite job was Klipsan Beach Cottages.

Klipsan Beach Cottages

Not only are we given pretty much a free rein in terms of what plants to add, but there is a large fenced in area where we can plant roses and fuchsias and lilies and tulips and not have to worry about the deer.  Many more photos of the KBC gardens are in albums at their Facebook page.

We continued to do the Long Beach parks and Ilwaco planters.

Long Beach planter

Ilwaco planter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I didn’t used to be much of a fan of petunias.  In fact, I was anti-petunia.  But some of the new ones are pretty fantastic.)

Also in Ilwaco, the port manager hired us to recreate part of the old boatyard garden, a project I had done many years ago as a volunteer, back when I had more free time.  It had gone away when a new electric line and fence were installed, and now we have brought the garden partway back and are planning to expand it a little more in 2012.

 

Ilwaco boatyard garden revived!

We did our usual planting of cosmos in the new, and slightly smaller than before, garden boat at Time Enough Books and felt flattered when owner Karla had our name painted on it by local iconic artist Don Nisbett.

"Plant Vessel" Skyler

Because some of the older plantings along the port street consisted of tall grasses and messy old Phormiums that blocked traffic sightlines, we redid several of the gardens with a smaller palette of hardy plants.

new port garden during Slow Drag in mid-September

Most of our jobs do seem to be about resorts and tourism.  Other than the Port, City of Ilwaco, Long Beach, and Klipsan Beach Cottages we continued to care for the Anchorage Cottages, Andersen’s RV Park, and the Wiegardt Gallery.

Anchorage...

Andersen's...

Wiegardt Gallery...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Golden Sands Assisted Living, we expanded into two new areas of the courtyard garden, a completely enclosed space where the residents can sit and admire the flowers.  Not a single deer can get in there.  The biggest challenge is to improve the soil on a budget, and we wheelbarrowed  many a bucket of horse manure (from another job of ours, the Red Barn Arena) carefully through the long carpeted hallway to the interior entry door to the garden.

Golden Sands, one of four quadrants

I think I will have remembered all of our public garden jobs if I add this photo of the Depot Restaurant (our favourite), where owner Nancy asked us for more colour in 2011.

colour! at the Depot, mid September

Oh, and bear with me while I boast a little about how great the park in Long Beach by Marsh’s Free Museum looked this year…so much better than a couple of years ago when it had the monstrous big Phormium in the back.

LB park, 27 July

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LB Park, 5 October

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roundabout the autumnal season in the garden, we were gobsmacked to get recognized as Ilwaco Merchant’s Association/Pacific County Economic Development Council 2010 business of the year…not only for our gardening, but for our work on the Discover Ilwaco Facebook page.  We got to ride a bus up to South Bend for an official banquet and award presentation.  Mary Caldwell of our beloved Klipsan Beach Cottages job took the photo that the awards group requested, in front of the KBC greenhouse, with one of my favourite plants of all time, Melianthus major ‘Antenow’s Blue’.

Skyler (Flora) and Allan

Next, a peek into the secret world of our private garden clients!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Bloom Monday

You can tell our work season hit full force because I never found time to blog.  I added a couple of wonderful new clients, had a house guest for a month, was much too busy, and other excuses.

There is a tradition among garden bloggers to do something called (I think) Bloom Tuesday, where they post what is in bloom on a certain Tuesday of the month.  I’ll cheat a bit (because today is massively stormy) and post what we saw when we went out to work this past Sunday and Monday.

November 20, rose

roses at Klipsan Beach Cottages…

hardy fuschia and hydrangea

A hardy Fuchsia…aurea I suppose…at Klipsan Beach Cottages with quite the amazing hydrangea that originally came from the old Heronswood Nursery.

Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve'

Also at KBC, Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’ which can almost always be counted on to bloom through the winter here.

In Long Beach, the big planters held up even through the first frost with continued bloom from Agyranthemum, Osteospermum (African daisies), and lavender.  The more tender fernleaf lavender, the nasturtiums, and the cosmos had their last gasp last week though.

Long Beach planter in bloom, 20 November

I think the most spectular show was put on by this Penstemon, also in one of the Long Beach planters, putting on every bit as much of an effort as it did in midsummer.

21 Nov, penstemon

You can see in the background that the Hungry Harbor’s own containers of Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly’ are still blooming, too….as are the ones at Andersen’s RV Park and the Ilwaco library, making it very hard to squeeze the bulbs in around the Annuals That Will Not Die.

I remember a mild winter in the mid nineties here where the African Daisies still bloomed in January.  Charming though that is, a killing frost would add a satisfying finale to the end of the work year, because otherwise we’re left just waiting, perhaps endlessly, for the final clean up time.

mostly about Marilyn’s (and privacy)

Some further thoughts (after last post) on garden privacy…and just an update about work.

I shouldn’t feel too guilty about work because we have been accomplishing a lot…

We got the Buddliea and a bunch of other shrubs pruned at Cheri’s garden:

Allan pruning Buddleia

Oops, where’s the after photo?  It ended up a little taller than knee high.  Oh well, here’s a nice photo of Porsche, Cheri and Charlie’s dog, always a delight.

Porsche by Buddleia

This area is a secret garden and full of flowers in summer.

Cheri's in summer

It’s a treat to work in a secluded garden because a lot of our work is right out in public, like in this park in Long Beach by Marsh’s Free Museum:

early March, Long Beach park

One always has to be cheerful, answer questions, and try not to look too horribly disheveled.

We’ve been getting lots of yards of soil energy (one by one, which is all our trailer will carry), and mulching assorted gardens, including that Long Beach park.

 

mulched Long Beach crocuses

Continuing on the spring clean up mission of mulching and cutting back, we headed for Marilyn’s garden yesterday.  After dumping a full load of debris at Peninsula Landscape Supply, we picked up another yard of soil energy.  This wonderful neighbour dog named Bob came over for pets and then played King of the Mountain.  His coat was so soft and clean you would never think one of his joys is running through the mud and lying on the sand pile.  We were told he also loves the soil energy pile because it’s warm.

Bob

Back to the question of privacy.  One of our goals with Marilyn’s garden on a smallish lot near Surfside was to provide some privacy from the neighbour’s garage, and also to stop the eye at the edge of the garden.  Here it is yesterday with last year’s grasses and perennials still up:

Marilyn's, noon

Here it is in the afternoon after a day of chopping: all the seclusion rather shockingly gone.  We had tried planting escallonia along the back for a year-round stopping of the eye, but the pesky deer kept eating them.  We’ve been experimenting and find these particular deer leave California wax myrtle alone, for now, and so we’ll try those instead.

Marilyn's, 4 PM

The  deer (three of them) were just waiting next door to see if we would plant something new and delectable.

one of the hungry neighbours

(They don’t bother Marilyn’s hellebores, as you can see by the healthy state of this one:)

hellebore along Marilyn's driveway

Last summer, the garage was almost hidden by perennials, as it will be this summer. The trick is to balance privacy with leaving lots of room for flowers and grasses.  (If it were my place, I would probably have put up a solid fence, the privacy solution that leaves the most room for a colourful floriferous garden.)

Marilyn's in summer

But last summer we ran into a sudden privacy/stopping the eye crisis when neighbours to the south cut back all the lower limbs on trees between the two lots, including limbs which were definitely on our side!  Suddenly, the eye was no longer stopped by a wall of evergreen but flew through to the stuff next door.

the disturbing new view

A telephoto shot like the one above exaggerates what we see, but that is actually how I felt, that the stuff against the neighbour’s garage was all I saw when looking to the south!  So we’ve added some shrubs on Marilyn’s side, and we hope this year they will take on enough height to make a green wall once again.  Years of experience helped us choose successfully some shrubs that the deer have left alone all winter:  Pieris, wax myrtle, Ceanothus, a couple of deciduous barberry ‘Helmond Pillar for a bronze contrasting effect, Ilex ‘Sky Pencil’.  All came through the winter looking healthy.  We’ll let you know if we manage to get our evergreen screen effect back this summer.  (Again,I often feel in a situation like this that the most instant solution is a sudden tall solid plank or panel fence!)

planning for future privacy

I felt pretty guilty today for not going to work…because there was no rain…and yet the desire to not work in high wind mixed with a desire to have a midmorning Olde Towne Café break (after sleeping late due to morning rain).

Olde Towne Café back room

The tendency to be motivated by guilt does help one be successfully self-employed.  When I got back to the house after a latté, a panini, and good company, I decided I might feel less concerned about work if I planted some of the new plants that were still lingering from early shopping trips.  The work guilt completely disappeared when I suddenly came up with a whole new project.

I had been dissatisfied for some time with the design of the eastern big bed in the back yard.  I like my neighbours to the east, but both the big house and cottage there are for sale.  (In fact, that vintage house and adorable little cottage are the ones we almost bought before deciding the manufactured home with huge lot was a better garden site.)  I don’t want to block their view but want to prepare for perhaps someday having less pleasant neighbours, so I had planted a row of baby evergreen shrubs down the east edge of the big bed.

And yet, I wanted all the big beds to be meadowy and floriferous.  Having a row of evergreens there made me feel like that side of the garden would be so heavy that it would almost be tilted off balance.

east bed

So I started to dig out a narrow bed along the property line to move the shrubs into.  Three or four kinds of Lonicera (boxleaf honeysuckle), an escallonia and a couple of Pernettya can be pruned if need be.

Three hours, some gusty wind and a rain squall later, the new bed was done and the plants moved.  I just need another yard of soil to fill in between the plants (and a few other places).  I also planted an escallonia to the west of the cottage neighbour’s window.  I want her to have a great view so will keep it pruned just below window level, but if a stranger…that sounds so xenophobic, but I picture a possible loud, creepy, staring, unpleasant stranger!…ever rents it, I can let the escallonia grow up another foot and have almost instant privacy.

new east bed

I like the view of the crab pots behind the neighouring gear shed, so unless I get that dreaded bad neighbour, I will keep the shrubs pruned low enough to maintain the view.  I’ll run some boards along the back to make it easier for Killer, the neighbour who mows, to run his weedeater along the edge. (That sounds like a scary neighbour, but he is a fisherman, thus: Fish Killer, I suppose!) I need Allan to help me run a string line so that the property line is perfect.

I guess I got too used to a completely enclosed garden at the old house.  There was some pretty rowdy neighbours nearby so I was glad of the secret garden. That kind of enclosure might never be necessary here.

 

spring clean up struggle!

Friday: With optimism, we headed out to the Red Barn Arena with the hope of planting violas and doing spring clean up in a garden next door.  I wouldn’t have minded weeding the little fence garden at the Red Barn as well.  Why did I think the drizzle might improve when the Port of Ilwaco had two red flags up (storm warning)?

Upon arriving at the Red Barn, we sat in the car for ten minutes of downpour, then went to Diane’s house to plant violas with sheer determination to not let her have another weekend of cheerless containers.  Allan started weeding the garden beds so I had to participate, of course.

Back to the Red Barn and more rain.  Drenched horses, most of them with blankets on.

at the Red Barn

Next stop, in a planned semi-repeat of the previous workday: The Basket Case for more violas for Long Beach planters.

Fred selling us some plants

The big plan was to make another stop at Peninsula Landscape Supply for another yard of soil energy and use part of it in the Long Beach planters and part to finish filling my two big new planters at home.  Sideways rain had Fred agreeing with us that the day’s mission simply had to be called off.

On the way home, we stopped at the Planter Box so I could buy a couple bags of soil amendments for those big new boxes at home.  This is the biggest garden centre on the peninsula with most of the bagged and boxed supplies you’d need for your garden, and is also the grower that provides me with Salvia viridis, my favourite annual, in quantity for all our assorted gardens.

Planter Box: pig watering can

A pig watering can is surely essential.

At the Planter Box: bulbs

at the Planter Box: seeds

Allan needed a quick stop at Dennis Co, the hardware store in Long Beach.  While he shopped, I pondered the weather and hoped he would remember to buy a chocolate bar.

weather view by Dennis co

He didn’t forget the chocolate bar.  He was on a mission to bleed the brakes on his motorcycle so dropped me off at Olde Towne where I soothed my work stress (as in, How in the heck are we ever going to catch up in this weather, and guilt re having taken such a long staycation) with soup and sandwich and the company of Luanne at my table for awhile because it was a very quiet afternoon…

rainy view from Olde Towne

The café had been quiet all day…As the rain finally let up, a few customers came in just as I was leaving.

Olde Towne afternoon

Work-related paperwork consumed the afternoon, followed by a surprise dinner at Pelicano (when a friend messaged me on Facebook to come over and join her).  The wind and rain lashed us on the way there, almost causing me to lose my scarf, but after dinner the temperature had risen, the wind was becalmed and the night skies were clearing.  (I love being easy walking distance from the Port!)

Saturday: We stopped at Olde Towne on the way to work to pick up the week’s coffee grounds for my compost.  Here the struggle was to have to go to work instead of hanging out with friends from Clatsop Wevers and Spinners Guild.

Cheri spinning at Olde Towne

You’ve read here about my ace realtor, Cheri Diehl, whose company (Discovery Coast Real Estate) found me the perfect buyer for my former home, and here she is spinning away at the monthly Olde Towne get together.

But staycation is over…and probably lasted too long…and I had to tear myself away so Allan and I could weed at Andersen’s Rv Park.

before

One relatively small bed was so solid with weeds that it took most of the day…with a little transplanting, weeding, and pruning accomplished in other parts of the garden.  The price was paid for having bailed out of work early last December to make the new house garden.  One last clean up of this bed would have made all the difference this spring.

after

Ah, well, at least it’s ready now for planting with assorted colours of California poppies.  I have to remind myself that even on staycationless years, trying to get all the spring cleanups done is a bit of a stressful panic.  And it couldn’t be helped that last week at this time all the gardens were under a blanket of snow.

spring clean up whirlwind

A typical day (and it isn’t even spring yet!)..

Left home, not particularly early as neither of us are morning people…

Stopped at The Basket Case Greenhouse to buy some violas for assorted jobs (Diane’s garden, Long Beach, McDonald’s…the latter bright yellow, of course). About a twenty minute drive from home.

Basket Case violas

Then off to Peninsula Landscape Supply for some Soil Energy mulch.

acquiring Soil Energy

Then to a garden called Sea Nest to do spring clean up and apply soil energy; for example:

before

after

The lovely weather turned to rain and hail, but once we are stuck into a soil unloading job, we have to finish.  I stood on the deck for awhile while Allan worked in his fluorescent rain gear.

 

wimping out vantage point

The squall left, then another came, and I saw him standing under the eaves wimping out while I mulched!

Seanest is on the dunes with path to the beach right out the back gate:

Seanest west side garden

Seanest gate to beach path

The squalls passed one after another and the sky became blue again.  Off we went to Long Beach (about 10 minutes south) with high hopes of finishing the mulching of one of the parks.  I realized to my sorrow that the bed which needed the mulch was infested with beach strawberry (sometimes wonderful, here not so much).  As I weeded prior to mulching, gloomy darkness fell and a torrent of rain began…Too much rain to even get out the camera to prove how miserable we were as we finished the job!

Dripping and muddy, we called an end to the workday and, after dumping our weeds at Long Beach city works, headed down to my favourite hangout, Olde Towne Trading Post Café.  I was hoping the usual Thursday afternoon crowd would be there, and indeed they were.

Allan joins Olde Towne Thursday crowd

Fortified with soup, cheesy bread sticks, Mexican hot chocolate and a brownie, and inspired by another break in the weather, we went back into the field and weeded and cut back Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ under the Ilwaco street trees.

With only an hour of daylight left, there was little point in heading back to work up north.  I dropped a gardening bill off at Time Enough Books at the Port…greeted by shop dog, Harper:

door to Time Enough Books

We got home in time to get a little project done before dark: Figuring out where to put two wooden boxes that we had gotten from behind the Long Beach city shop; they had been used for shipping glass and will make a kitchen garden raised bed area for a couple of years till they rot away.  I’ll paint them on some nice day.

instant kitchen garden; just add soil and seeds

Oh…the cutest thing I saw all day was this little round moss in one of the garden beds at Sea Nest.  Adorable!

tiny bun

a contented goodbye to the old garden

Today is closing day for the buyer of the former Tangly Cottage.  (The business name moves with us, but I will probably think of that house as Tangly until the new residents give it a name of their own!)  Any minute now the papers will be filed at the courthouse up in South Bend and Jon will be the new owner.

The change is not as poignant as I thought it would be because I could not be happier with the sale.  In 1993, a year before I bought the little cottage, I was invited into a tiny house in Seaview, where I saw the most cunning and beautiful built in storage areas and wood inlays from driftwood collected on the beach.  The brilliant carpentry work was by a man named Jon, and after I acquired my own tiny house, I often thought that if I did not spend ALL my money on the garden, I would love to have him come and make the inside of the tiny house perfect.

So, many years later, who should be the buyer of my little house but the very same Jon!  It is a gift to the house, which was well loved by me, but whose potential has never been realized.  Jon already has plans brewing, and the lack of extreme poignancy in the sale is the fact that I will get to see the results.

We had a walk through the garden before the sale closed and he showed a great interest in the plants and mentioned that he would have to learn Latin names now.  True, a lot of the plants I left behind don’t even have common names.  Jon’s partner, and a friend of theirs, are good gardeners, so the garden will be well loved also.   I thought I would have to do a last farewell walk around and say goodbye to the plants left behind, but I feel no need because I know they are going into good hands. Jon’s a civic minded chap, so I also think his residency here will be a gift to Ilwaco.

Allan kept an eye on the house for the last week because of freezing cold weather.  One day when he went over to make sure no pipes had frozen, he took some photos of the house and garden in snow.  So here’s a farewell slideshow:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It certainly is going to take awhile before our new garden has the kind of quirky character that 16 years brought to the old one.  We almost tried to take those two big lower arbours to New Garden, but when I asked our real estate agent, Cheri Diehl of Discovery Coast Real Estate, if she thought it would make a difference, she said “Wait a week!”, with an air of mystery that let me know someone who appreciated the garden as it was might be thinking of buying.  I had told her I hoped for the perfect buyer, and her agent, Warren, certainly found me one.

When we went in to Discovery Coast Real Estate Friday to sign the final papers, there were hugs all around…between Jon and I, realtor Warren and I, glowing happy faces.  Would that all  home sales had such swift and happy outcomes. I picture the little green, purple and blue house  eagerly waiting for someone who will lavish lots of love and skill on the inside.  Little house, today is the day that your new life begins!