all photos by Florence Smith Muma, who came to our garden open.
I love to see what other people notice in the garden. Florence noticed the things that I want people to notice.
front garden:
Davidia involucrata ‘Sonoma’, west side front driveway garden:
west side of garage with water jugs and work buckets:
front garden:
through the trowel gate to the east side of the house:
through the spider web arbour to the surprisingly large back garden:
double gate to compost bins, arbour with Paul’s Himalayan Musk rose:
She took the east metal path into the bogsy wood.
She found the secret sit spot in the south east corner. I have sort of a red furniture theme because we got assorted garden furniture from our friend Patti Jacobsen.
She entered the Willow Grove from an obscure path, good for her for finding all the paths! And found the southeast gate.
the main gate to the frog bog:
the south end of Willows Loops West
The rhododendron path:
coming through a side path:
central metal path:
a new and secret path:
Willows Loop West:
pink camassia:
Persicaria bistorta ‘Superba’:
Back by the greenhouse, she noticed my favourite gardening quotation:
Thank you, Florence. I feel that I have been on a tour of a new-to-me garden! I loved seeing it through your eyes.
Nickel was ready to be taken home by one of his admirers.
The catio cats found all the people fascinating and got many pets through the catio wire.
Alicia had set up the first day of her sale, which she called “Grandma’s Garage Sale” as, like I did in Seattle, she has her grandma’s house. An early bird waited for the driveway to open.
All day people went back and forth between our open garden and Alicia’s back patio.
Impatiens omieana and a golden Japanese maple
Our friends Dave and Laura came all the way from Tumwater. (They have other good friends on the peninsula, too.)
Mark, whose Ocean Park garden we much admire, brought some potted Garry Oak trees for me to give away. I decided to put the best one in place of the new mimosa tree which is barely leafing out. When I removed the mimosa to transplant elsewhere, I saw it was barely rooting out. It may be waiting for warmer weather.
The oak tree, centre below, should do well there as it is a west coast native and used to our weather.
Look how much are tree dahlia has grown!
We had many interesting garden guests, including new ones who I would not recognise again so I do hope they would remind me who they are. Many lovely comments were made, especially about the many woodland paths. One guest was a gardener named Florence, who took some photos which will be tomorrow’s post.
We had a garden open long weekend. It wouldn’t have been quite as many days long but our dear and delightful neighbor Alicia was having a big garage sale on this huge “World’s Longest Garage Sale” weekend that happens from Chinook to Oysterville starting on the Friday (some even start on Thursday) of Memorial Day weekend. We wanted to be open to help draw people for her because she does so much for us, including cooking us dinner every day during a recent busy week! She was delayed by one day, though, and missed out on the Friday folks. Our first garden day was busy with guests, invited through our local Facebook friends and a peninsula Facebook gardening group. I do wish I hadn’t lost track of time and had put the dates here, but I don’t think the Tootlepedals or Laurie Graves would have been able to come all this way. Here are some photos of day one.
Rose ‘Radway Sunrise’Peruvian scilla; the deer chomp the leaves but not the flowers
The three Catio cats got lots of love.
Skooter basked in admiration.
I gave friends some starts of sarracenia.
Amy, who used to work for the former Lamb Nursery, an excellent now closed nursery that I ordered from when I first became an obsessed gardener in Seattle, is someone I totally trust to collect plant starts. She and a friend delved in. She had brought me three wonderful plants from her collection.
I finally got to meet Storm and Mary’s dogs Triscuit and Trevor. Trevor is outgoing. Triscuit is shy.
Sandra from South Bend and New Zealand came at the end and we had a good long visit. I could listen to that kiwi accent for hours.
Three more days to go, at least five posts in all as I’ll have two posts of guest photos. A quiet flock of pelicans drifted by overhead.
Ilwaco Fire station
At the end of the day, Allan watered our volunteer garden at the fire station.
We weeded, Allan watered and strimmed the garden edge’s long grass, and I petted Cosmo.
Some young boys also gave Cosmo kind attention, making him a contented cat.
A beautiful pony:
The farrier was by the south door, so Allan took a circuitous route to water the lone planter there.
Diane’s garden
Holly got her biscuit.
Allan checked on the cosmos he had planted by the driveway last week….
…while I planted more at the back of the septic vault garden.
We went home because it was too early to water Long Beach. While I watered, Allan did two nearby jobs.
J Crew Cottage mowing:
Strimming at the future Smart Moves Clinic:
He watered the narrow front bed, where a handsome hosta has emerged.
Then we both went off to water, which I had been dreading because the wind was strong and cold.
Long Beach
It was an endurance situation, just pushing through with grinding teeth and muscles all clenched because of the cold wind. First, the planters on Sid Snyder Drive.
And I have to admit, I said and meant that we would NOT haul bucket water a block to the last planter, near the beach, where the water doesn’t work. And we did not. Maybe next week.
In the distance, I rollatored along from where I had been watering more eastern planters to catch up with Allan at the last functional faucet planter.
We then watered the six long blocks of Long Beach planters, occasionally pulling a few weeds from under the street trees. But mostly just watering the planters; it was so cold I just wanted to get out of there. I feel the cold more because of old age, I think.
The larger Lewis and Clark Square planter gets watered with two short hoses hooked up to the nearby street planter.
I did pull a few more long grass weeds out of the strip of garden in the NE quadrant of Fifth Street Park. It’s out of the north wind there.
Allan hose watered the bed in the SE quadrant where the water just doesn’t seem to be on or to be hitting the plants properly. Those sprinklers don’t do much when the plants get tall.
A Cerinthe major purpurascens in the evening light
We were so glad to get done and get home and indoors.
Tomorrow is the beginning of our garden open days. [I apologize that I never formally announced an invitation here. I was tired and sort of forgot that the blog runs a week behind. We will have another garden open around the end of July/beginning of August, if fate allows.] We will be up early because we want to start at 9 AM, at the same time that the three or four day “world’s longest garage sale” begins. That was not truly essential and I sort of felt like it was a mistake to add getting up early to our schedule. Alicia had been going to do a garage sale next door starting the same day but got delayed, and we had already announced our start time. None of us are morning people so this will perhaps be a challenge.
In our volunteer garden, we planted cosmos that I’d grown from seed. This garden always includes some chatting with people getting their mail.
I felt a lot of vertigo today and needed Allan’s help getting in and out of the garden.
J Crew Cottage
Across the street from our house, we planted more cosmos and weeded and pulled the rampant Spanish bluebells. The morning vertigo had decreased so I could do the planting All By Myself.
Long Beach
I weeded the flag pavilion garden at Veterans Field and got to pet a nice, soft black lab named Bella.
I used to think that Brodiea ‘Queen Fabiola’ was a good bulb to plant because it has excellent blue flowers. Now I’m off it because of the messy foliage before the flowers bloom.
One can grab handfuls and pull it away sideways, leaving most of the flowers. It’s a messy job.
While weeding in Fifth Street Park, I was shocked to see that the gunnera by Bensen’s Restaurant is puny where it is usually tall by now.
Investigation reminded me that the waterfall pond, whose slight leak or overflow used to nourish the gunnera, is still not full and has last year’s maple leaves.
Maybe the leak got worse or the pump failed. I gave the gunnera a bucket of water from the nearby planter faucet (or maybe I had Allan do it) and will keep on giving it supplemental water…but I don’t think it will be enough for it to reach its former grandeur.
AND the nearby garden bed has a mole.
In the NE quadrant garden bed, which I tidied up, the Dutch iris are grand right now.
Even though the most cottage garden-y end of the strip has an underlayment of ground cover type weeds, it looks better unweeded than weeded.
For some reason, I had toyed with the idea of transforming this bed to a quiet and elegant row of shrubs. I don’t know why.
Meanwhile, Allan had been on horsetail patrol in the NW quadrant.
Did I post a few days ago about how someone had smashed one the Renee O’Connor tiles on Ocean Beach Boulevard? I just found a photo of the way it used to look.
So wasteful of beauty.
We went home so I could water our garden, and Allan went on his own to two more watering jobs.
the hill garden
A driveway area that needs filling because the Juniperus conferta didn’t make it:
the good end of the same bed:
One of the irises, from garden owner MaryAnn’s daughter, is in bloom.
The mid-driveway bed:
The couch grass problem bed, looking good.
Neighbours:
The work board tonight:
We have been planting a lot of plants at those places, but every one of them is getting more so can’t be erased, although some are not getting any cosmos because the weather just looks too dry for places where only we water once a week. It has been an extraordinarily dry May with no good rain in sight.
I stayed at home to do some more arranging and weeding for my garden open days.
My blue bean tree, Decaisnea fargessi, is looking great and flowering at last. I hope it has blue beans, common name “dead man’s fingers” (!), like it did in my old garden!
A clematis on the east hedge of boxleaf honeysuckle. I am glad to have a flower because most of it blooms on the neighbour’s side!
At the edge of the Bogsy Wood, but in fairly dry soil, I had planted last autumn three yews that were bought at the same time.
Two of them, with Sambucus ‘Madonna’ in the middle, look beautiful.
The one in the foreground has never looked good (except, I suppose, in the nursery, or else I didn’t notice it wasn’t quite right.)
I trimmed it back hard…
…[but three days later when walking around the garden on an open day with friends from Astoria, we agreed about how unhappy it it is and I yanked it out with one hand. It did have some white roots coming out of the root ball so I bunged it in a water bucket and will pot it up and see if it improves.]
Meanwhile, Allan went to water in the afternoon.
Time Enough Books
Oh dear, the alchemiclla mollie needs more watering. Karla used to run a sprinkler once a week, set out by hand; there is no plumbing in those curbside beds. We will see if that tradition can continue.
The sea thrift is in full bloom, wish it bloomed longer. Even when all the flowers are sheared off, it does not rebloom.
Ilwaco Freedom Market
They had put up a little fence to keep people from walking through the garden. If it works, we can plant more in there! It is even further out than our pitiful line of found rocks.
The Tiger Eyes sumac really is coming back!
Looks like Allan pulled the tatty allium foliage by the sidewalk.
The curbside bed:
I am missing out on the best time by delegating the job!
In the curbside bed next door that we no longer care for, a columbine rises above the quaking grass.
I knew the wind was supposed to be 25 miles an hour today, which it certainly howled like it was. But I did not except it to be cold, in the fifties. I don’t mind working in the cold, but adding a cold wind is just too too much. My first inclination was to skive off for the day and hope the Long Beach planters would be ok. Although this did make me anxious, the wind made me more anxious about being miserable.
Then, after I had decided on the course of irresponsibility, the sun came out. Dag nab it. I knew all along we were going to have to water, I suppose.
We did postpone a couple of other work tasks, and I spent the morning labelling plants. When I was taken by surprise by seeming short on labels, I looked at amazon prime for next day delivery only to find an announcement on all the plain white plastic labels (I know I shouldn’t use plastic but…I reuse and reuse, and so do my friends) that they are considered a hazardous shipment and can’t be sent to a post office box. (We don’t have street delivery.) WHAT? and why? I’m not making this up.
The best labels I have are ones a friend made by cutting up white plastic cartons of some kind. My mother used to cut up clear milk cartons. I tried that, but the ink came off those too fast. I was going to cut up broken black plastic pots and write on them with a white marker. Even bought the marker, but where is it now and where is the time to implement that idea? Another great option was when we found some old white Venetian blinds and cut them into tag size. Today’s hazardous materials incident did inspire me to think outside panic mode and to look in advance for recycled plastic labels to buy. I can’t afford the wood or bamboo ones, or…rather…I could, but would prefer to spend the money on plants…which is environmentally irresponsible of me. Must improve. [Later, I found out that it is the marking pen included with the labels that makes them a hazardous shipment! So the answer is to order the kind with no marking pen.]
Fortunately, in the evening I found a bin in the greenhouse with lots of old labels, all I will need for now, giving me time to think about better options than unrecycled plastic for next time. Maybe I WILL get it together to cut up old plastic pots.
Labeling:
And then watering. Poor plants in gallons and smaller very much want to feel their roots in the ground.
And then…
Long Beach
We started watering the downtown planters and adding a few plants at 2:45, because we wanted to be home by six to zoom an Ilwaco city council meeting. The plants were happy to see us and to get water for recovery from the drying wind.
Parahebe perfoliata in the big Lewis and Clark Square planter
Bulb foliage clean up continues.
I don’t want columbines because of their tatty foliage, but they always get a pass because of their flowers. Where they came from, I do not know.
Some of the quick connect hose connections are lowdown and dirty and very difficult to use. It is tiresome.
Here is a reminder that this planter has one santolina…
…without its handsome match on the other side. All that was left of the other one was a thready stem of foliage and broken root. What the heck??
Allan caught me brooding over it.
For all that it can be monotonous and take over and not leave room for pretties like diascias, golden oregano really does look good.
That is one of two planters with Escallonia ‘Pink Princess’, there since volunteer days, that wants to get as big as a truck.
Finally, the last planter.
We had time to grocery shop at V’s Coastal Market and then I had time to water my pots again at home before the meeting.
After the city council meeting, I emailed a friend who had also zoomed it and asked, “How can they adjourn a meeting with no warning, no ‘goodbye folks’, no ‘thanks for coming’, no ‘are there any more public comments?’ So RUDE.” Ilwaco council meetings are so full of interruptions, mostly (as a citizen or three have pointed out and as even male council members have pointed out) male politicians interrupting female. In comparison, Long Beach council is well spoken and respectful in the way it listens to people. I am gobsmacked twice a month by the Ilwaco meetings! And what’s more, Ilwaco starts at 6 PM, whereas Long Beach starts at the much more convenient hour (for planter waterers) of 7 PM. Trying to be an informed citizen in my own town just results in my blood being on the boil.
To think that in 2010, I had a choice between moving into my mother’s double wide in Long Beach on a lot almost as big as this one, which I had just inherited, or this one in Ilwaco. Many times in the last couple of years I wish I had made the other choice, or even stayed in our little house behind the boatyard (but that garden was in too much shade…but I miss the natural pond there). Still, there is one huge advantage to where we live now: Having Alicia as a next door neighbour and the J Crew across the street and Norwoods two doors down.
I planned to get an early start, then had terrible insomnia, then slept late and got a late start. First, I indulged in some appreciation of my new primulas, some on their second year. You can see the deep path has dried out in the heat, wish I had time to dig and contour in there.
This primula is new this year.
I like it a lot.
I finally planted my new ferns, some of them in a recently expanded bed by the metal path.
I sorted out the plants I have propagated, being the kind of person who can’t throw out a perfectly good plant. The collection included a lot of dross, and a narrowed it down to a about four tables full. It seemed impossible and so time-consuming and then came that magic moment when everything slotted into place. I am tidying for a spring garden open, which is a good thing because it makes me weed, even though I don’t have time and it isn’t almost perfectly weeded until I have the late July or early August Lily Time garden open day.
The wood that Allan got for free had arrived at just the right time as one of my tables, made a few years ago with an inside quality door, was about to collapse.
There was considerable excitement when the door was gone and a shelf of breakable pots was loosely attached and started to tilt. It can’t be attached to the house because when one has an old double wide manufactured home, one must never “puncture the seal”, as the innards of the walls are cheap and would spread any damp that got inside.
Only one terracotta pot got broken during the crisis.
Allan broke the old door up and found the inside partly made of cardboard. It’s amazing it lasted for several years with innards like this.
All fixed with new planks from the free wood pile. If it has not been for that well-timed pile, we’d have had nothing with which to fix it.
While I sorted plants, Allan trimmed a few more paths in the Bogsy Wood…
….and Willow Grove.
Other than picking up empty pots and trays and tools, I feel my project is pretty well organised except for labelling the plants. If only I had time to perfect the weeding!
In the front garden, tying in the jasmine that Tony Tomeo gave us; it needs special hand watering now as it did not like being transplanted just before the heat wave. It will be fine, though.
Back garden, appreciation, while weeding, of that chaenomeles that I like so much, from Cistus Nursery, still blooming:
Allan noticed two kinds of allium:
A thalictrum which was short when I weeded near it a couple of weeks ago is as tall as me now.
The crab pots behind the next door gear shed are stacked high:
Too bad I don’t have a before of this bed south of the fire circle which was blurry with weeds, especially “sticky willy” and some stinking Bob.
Allan helped by strimming and blowing off a path that had been buried by meianthemum.
Appreciation of the former danger tree bed:
The last difficult weedy spot was an area in the east bed of iris and camassia full of velvet grass, which makes me sneeze and itch.
Was sneezing too much to take an after photo.
Finally, I did a task I do not enjoy. (I rather enjoy most weeding.) I planted lots and lots of cosmos that I had grown from seed anywhere I could squeeze it in to the back garden. Skooter helped.
I still have lots of cosmos left. I wish I enjoyed planting, Maybe when I am more retired, I won’t find it so stressful and tiresome.
When Allan walked to the post office, he saw a cute cat from two blocks down named Yo Yo.
He unpacked and stacked the free wood, three pieces of which would become essential the very next day.
I finally got the front yard weeded. The afters were before Allan blew off the sidewalk and paths.
Front east bed:
Callistemon ‘Wetlands Challenged Mutant’:
sidewalk and paths:
I had had a nagging feeling that I was expecting a plant order. But even though I knew a box was at the post office for me, I didn’t put those two things together until Allan went to the post office (interruption for post office garden photo)…
…and brought home a box from Sebright Nursery. Usually plants get delivered to our porch by UPS. I was afraid to look at the plants, almost all of them special ferns, but they were fine. I did not want to get distracted from weeding, so as I unpacked them, I put them all in a small bucket to soak their roots till tomorrow. I tried to photograph each fern and then the label, which are not the kind you can stick in the ground, and was not entirely successful. It is going to be more of a challenge even than usual to remember which is which.
That’s a beesia, not a fern.
Also got another of the painted fern called ‘Crested Surf’, the only one with a real tag so its ok the photo failed!
I then tackled an unweeded area in the centre of the back yard west bed.
The front garden created three heaping wheelbarrows and the back garden another three.
I admired my pink camassia some more…
…and was thrilled to see the return of Astilbe ‘Amber Moon’, which I thought had died.
I should have remembered to cut back the foliage on this variegated iris, in the midst of the Persicaria bistorta ‘Superba’. I trimmed 100 leaves to the new growth (I counted!) and it still wasn’t done.
Allan kept busy mowing the lawns of two neighbours…
and then went to the port to get bunny poo. I had forgotten it yesterday. On the way home, he saw a pile of free wood and snagged all the good boards.
This would prove to be very fortuitous when we needed just such wood two days later.
Tangly Cottage Gardening 