The dogwood outside the kitchen window is having its moment of glory.
On the windowsill, a tomato is emerging already, after only five days! See far right by re-used Annie’s tag.
I bravely took a garden walk from front to back with cane instead of rollator and filmed a rather vertiginous video for you. It is a very shaky video (sort of embarrassingly bad!), probably because I was more anxious than I even knew about walking with a cane instead of a rollator. Nevertheless, at least for anyone whose curiosity is strong enough to endure, it can sort of explain how the garden fits together (since I am still daunted by drawing a garden map). Don’t worry about the shaking; I don’t have palsy (yet), just nerves.
I filled green jugs with water (formerly cat litter jugs) from the various rain barrels because I want the barrels to refill with rain. It has been so dry.
I planted the three Nicotiana langsdorfii that had arrived from Annie’s Annuals and then decided to try to sift some compost for the driveway garden. When I weeded it yesterday, I noted that the soil there is very tight. The weeds hang on and don’t slip out nicely. It seems to be the way that the biosolids mulch that I got from Long Beach locks together.
I have not used compost out there before because I wanted to avoid getting horsetail in that bed…but the horsetail has slowly appeared anyway and so now compost will be key to loosening up that soil.
A beloved old flannel shirt has finally become so tattered that it is unwearable. It will be memorialised as compost.
I only managed to sift this much before the rain came.
Before:
After:
I hope it helps.
I think in the autumn, I will undo all of the concrete vaults, and, with Allan’s help, reposition them, each on a concrete paver to keep weeds from coming through from the base.
Faerie napped the rainy and windy afternoon away.
I was glad to have a break from gardening and used some of the time to catch up on the Tootlepedal blog.
Long Beach
Allan took advantage of a free appliance dump day to get rid of an old washing machine for our neighbour Alicia, took another look at the now empty parking lots berms east of downtown Long Beach, and returned with a concrete vault that had been discarded along the way. He also photographed a weedy garden bed in Veterans Field…
…and one in Fifth Street Park where camassia used to bloom at this time of year. The restroom building is being resided and repaired, which is hard on gardens.
Eventually, he may lose interest in bringing back these rather mind boggling photos!
Dare I say if the time spend tearing parks out (of course, he brought me another photo of the former parking lot bed) was used in weeding them and making them nice, perhaps it would be wiser? Time will tell…
If he didn’t bring me these photos, I wouldn’t be thinking about our quarter century of the Long Beach job at all except to be grateful that I’m working in my garden instead. He needs to process his feelings about it, though.
Allan went to Patty’s house to replace a roof panel on her porch/catio. Good job!
Later, he tried spray painting a styrofoam cooler for me to turn it into a faux stone trough. The expensive paint (my choice based on something I read) was a total fail even though it claimed to be good for the purpose. $16 down the drain. Next will try just regular old black paint!
I puttered at home, starting with sifting one load of compost out of the already sifted compost in bin two. The resifting did provide more, thank goodness, because I needed it to finish one area.
Bins two and three:
In bin three above, the green result of an idea: I have two much elephant garlic and if I dig it and then cut off the bulbs, I can get green stuff for the compost, and, in fact, this applies to most plants and even some weeds (not horsetail or bindweed) that I might dig up and discard.
Squeezed out this much compost for a low spot next to the bench.
I did some weeding in the driveway garden that I had not been able to do because it has been too miserably cold and windy. In one of the concrete troughs:
Today it was too hot to stay out there in the sun! Almost 70. So in the afternoon, I retreated to the willow grove where I could finally weed because of no wind. I found another veratrum by the deep swale.
The swale has dried up and the frog bog water has dropped low. Our weather has been so dry. Where are our April showers? The forecast for summer is dire:
And Pacific Northwest news reports are predicting warmer than usual weather all summer and a drought because of the lack of snowpack and little rain. Oh dear.
Well, for today the soil in the willow grove was still damp.
My helper arrives.
Looking east…
I was thrilled to see three cardiocrinums, including one that is two years old in the garden and quite sizeable.
Lots of pretty but pesky Spanish bluebells in the far southeast corner…
Looking west:
I moved five of my new big river rocks to the bed by the deep path and wondered if they look silly (well, they are not dug in yet).
Seems my lack of garden confidence is persisting. But…I have primulas!
Allan also noticed some primulas…
…and the Fatsia japonica ‘Spider’s Web’ in his garden.
And look, cosmos are already coming up in the seed trays. With them, I hope to make my garden and the post office garden and fire station look good.
At our little volunteer garden, Allan dug out a clump of Solidago ‘Fireworks’ (goldenrod) that was infested with the rampant pink geranium.
I did general weeding and contemplating how unsatisfactory I find my efforts in this garden.
Allan moved a piece of driftwood for me…
I got rid of some bulb foliage and we both dug up some of the invasive Spanish bluebells that, like the pink geranium, we did not plant here. I guess it looks a little better.
I was feeling like I had lost my ability to create beauty. The usual compliments from passersby, although comforting to hear, failed to convince me that the garden was worthy of any praise.
Ilwaco Freedom Market
We weeded, didn’t take long. I was having doubts about how the garden looked.
To the east, the weeding by a hard working port employee has been progressing in the bed that had been completely overgrown. I think the santolinas might be goners, having been let go too long without being clipped. I hope they grow back because the fellow has been working so hard he deserves for it to look good.
The Red Barn
While weeding, we enjoyed the company of Bentley and Quinn.
Bentley was not best pleased because I had switched to a smaller dog biscuit, of which I offered him three, but he wanted a big biscuit and refused them.
There is a small garden bed, too.
Diane’s garden
Holly got her biscuit.
The only crambe maritima (sea kale) that I have ever successfully grown is in Diane’s roadside bed.
The septic vault garden and the front driveway garden are both at that awkward stage of bulb foliage dying off.
While weeding the septic vault garden, we had a nice view of the pasture between Diane’s place and the Red Barn.
Ilwaco Fire Station
We just did a drive by look and didn’t see anything that couldn’t wait till another day. I thought, oh dear, it is my usual messy garden.
All gardens with bulbs are at the awkward stage now of letting the bulb foliage die back.
J Crew Cottage
Across the street, I weeded in the front garden and felt pretty good about it, probably because most of the design isn’t by me but by the previous owner.
Norwood garden
Two doors down, I checked the tiny garden for weeds and admired some fading Dutch iris growing through a golden euonymus.
reading
Gardening has kept me so busy that it had taken me two nights to finish Anne Lamott’s less than 200 page new book. A few more takeaways …
About community: “Odd, anxious people like me come together and then stick around awhile. It is uncomfortable and metamorphic: nobody in isolation becomes who they were designed to be.“
Oh dear, if that is true, it does not bode well for me attaining enlightenment during my old age.
“Frederick Buechner wrote: ‘You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.’ This is unfortunate.”
It certainly would be unfortunate if this were true. Is it??
In a church group of people trying to form community: “Another woman said she loved to host people for dinner but a year earlier had hosted a couple and not remembered their dietary needs-one was vegan, one was gluten-free. She had been afraid and ashamed to have anyone over since then. Would someone be willing to come over to her house for dinner? All of the people raised their hands.” I found that very touching.
Anne tells us that she herself likes being alone: “I’d always loved being alone and still do. I used to feel there was something mythic in being insulated, fending off life’s dangers alone, the hero in a Jack London story, by myself in the woods with only a fire and courage, the eyes of wolves glinting upon me. The lone wolf watching it all from a distance is such a romantic image, but he is actually the most vulnerable in the pack.”
I found all of that rather disheartening. At least I am in a pack of two. At least she says later on “Solitude is one kind of classroom.”
I realized I had been feeling glum all day about the gardens we visited and that I have lost confidence because of the way our “old” gardens in Long Beach are being ripped out…makes me wonder if all our efforts are just…tired. Definitely am planning on retiring at the end of this year so I can focus on my own private garden; maybe someone would like to take over our volunteer gardens. I would like all my gardening failures to be private, although I won’t mind sharing them with a sympathetic audience on this blog. Having my failures be public is no fun.
Today was going to be a work day, but Sandridge Road was closed for road work of some kind and we couldn’t get to the Red Barn and Diane’s.
The crab pot wall next door is getting even bigger! They are tying it down where it is close to our fence. The gear shed owner, when I admired their work of cleaning up all along the west side of the shed where blackberries and bindweed were rampant, said he is amazed at all the birds he hears in our trees when he arrives at dawn. I really should try to hear the dawn chorus just once.
I turned to bin three to seek enough compost for the now weeded center bed.
The small bin at the end, bin four now, has the last of the bags of raw wool and on top of that, an increasing pile of small branches and hard clippings that can eventually go through the chipper shredder.
I got distracted by some potting, including a start of this hosta that I got from a clump at Long Beach city hall last autumn. It was planted by the former city manager, Gene, in a garden that was in memory of his wife, Peggy, who died of cancer. After he retired, the city removed the sign that said “Peggy’s Park”, or maybe Gene took it home. The hosta is now a wee piece of that memory in my garden (well, in a pot, because I’ve never managed to grow a large hosta in the ground without it getting chomped). Its purple base when it first comes out is its best feature.
I spent considerable time sorting out the propagation area between what survived the cold snap and what did not and was thrilled to find my extra purchase of ‘Cheek-by-Jowl’ skunk cabbage emerging; I had forgotten that I had potted it up. The tag from Far Reaches Farm reads “Our selection from near the extirpated location of a dwarf population above Carbonado relayed to us by NW plant legend Edith Dusek. This has proved to be very atypical in that it produces a zillion crowns in a single plant. A one gallon pot plant had 50 divisions, a large garden clump over a thousand. Smaller than lowland clones.”
I dared the wind and entered the Bogsy Wood to see if maybe my other Jeek by Jowl is emerging by the deep swale.
I didn’t dare go closer because the wind was so strong that alder branches might drop but, to end the suspense, I looked two days later on a windless day and I believe I see it emerging!
I admired the Danger Tree bed, as I do almost every day.
And a dark pink primula by the deep path.
And a narcissus.
And a blue corydalis and a pulmonaria in the same bed.
The deep path is slowly drying out (we need April showers!).
Finally I sifted compost. As I sift it through a big screen, I break up plant stems before throwing them into the next bin.
First load:
I got one more small load before running into the uncompleted debris halfway down that is not yet worth sifting.
It is still too chunky to be worthwhile.
Second load:
I only got to the end of the water canoe on each side and felt I had by then run out of siftable compost.
(I will now ignore that good old British saying, “Mustn’t grumble!”)
I went indoors only to get deeply annoyed at an opinion piece in the weekly local paper:
What?? Excuuuuuse me???! Expensive property “self-selects for aesthetically sensitive…” WHAT? I see many houses and cabins (and dare I say even my 1979 double-wide enhanced with arbors) and tiny houses and even trailers (caravans) that I think have more charm to offer than the many ostentatious, consumerist, and unaesthetic mansions of wealthy neighborhoods along beach and bay. Being “aesthetically sensitive” is not the default setting for the rich.
As I calmed my nerves with a nice cuppa very working class Builders Tea, Allan came back home from errands and brought me these photos of the parking lot berms In Long Beach, all three of which now look like this (with nice new curbs instead of the old rotting away railroad ties that they used to have). I am sure the curbs could have been installed without tearing out every plant.
The north and south beds used to have a reasonably successful set of plants. They weren’t great gardens or worth missing, really….but…the only maintenance they needed was trimming plants back along the sides a couple of times a year and one HUGE weeding a year, plus one lesser weeding in autumn, a spring clean up trim, and the fighting back of some blackberry that got firmly entrenched during the year I previously tried to retire and they weren’t cared for for nine months. I only found the energy to find these two photos, not the best.
Former parks manager Mike Kitzman picked out some plants for them and so did I. (He liked phormiums so there were two huge ones). The center berm was mostly just beach pines, salal, and some evergreen huckleberry. The other beds also had pines, because Mike liked them a lot. A native plant nursery was having a business closing sale at the time so a lot of shrubs came from there. There were some really gorgeous aronias. One bed had more rugosa roses (white and dark pink) because it was a garden that often got trampled. The north and south beds also had several handsome Rosa rubrifolia that at least one local gardener particularly admired. And Stipa gigantea, my favorite ornamental grass. The shrubs were an interesting mix that did really well and were so drought tolerant that they looked good even in a summer like last summer when it didn’t rain for four months. Just in my memory I can count over 30 different kinds of good plants that thrived there. I feel that a wide variety of plants makes a public garden more interesting; it’s dull to me if they are all the same.
Rumor has it that the pine tree roots were damaging the surrounding asphalt. We worked around these beds a lot and I never noticed any unevenness from roots, and if there was, surely just the offending trees could have been removed. I guess it bothers me to think of all those healthy plants just piled up dying. Maybe to be ground up and added to the human poo biosolids mulch ingredients and thus end up back in gardens somewhere.
I am not emotionally attached to the point of missing working on these old gardens (am sentimental about some individual plants, though). Allan is the one who goes to look, I wouldn’t even bother. He finds it upsetting.
We will see what happens. Will the new look offer an interesting and inspirational plant assortment or will it be like a shopping mall parking lot landscape? (So far, last time Allan looked, the beach approach garden that got torn out is now just weeds, which I suspect will be sprayed with weedkiller.) I keep telling Allan I don’t want to see and he keeps bringing me photos from his errand excursions, and I do understand that he needs commiseration with his feelings about it.
Allan took Zinc for a practice walk on the harness. She managed to slip out of it once before, when he thought she could play near him on a long leash, so she must be supervised.
After a short walk, she went back into the south catio. I wonder if walks will make her feel she wants to be in the whole garden all the time.
Watering season seems to have begun early. We are warned of a possible frost tonight, and nothing would make my propagated plants in pots unhappier than being cold while too dry. And the fish totes need water where I planted peas and broad beans.
The day had begun with asking Allan for help with a tiny splinter or thin thorn in my left foot that has been increasingly annoying. It is on the side of my heel where, not being a yogi, I cannot twist it to see it. He got most of it out but didn’t think it all came out, leading to many hypochondriacal thoughts from this practiced hypochondriac. We put on some antibiotioc cream and a bandaid. Since it hurt from being poked at, I had to tiptoe through the tulips all day with my left heel up as if I were wearing a heeled pump.
I persevered because I really wanted to weed the center bed.
Before, looking south. The two paths are Center Loop East and West.
The wall of crab pots next door behind the green gear shed keeps growing.
The hardest part was from the south end of the water canoe to the area where I had weeded among the sweet woodruff a few days ago.
The after didn’t look impressively different because, due to possible frost, I don’t want to cut back the cannas yet and because there is still so much bulb foliage too green to pull off.
Skooter had “helped”.
Allan helped more than Skooter, by putting a heavy open-seat chair over a tall white sanguisorba.
Some parrot tulips in the center bed:
I ended the weeding cleanup in rain and a strong wind, which thwarted Allan’s idea of an early evening mowing. By five o clock, I was glad to go indoors to get back to my Anne Lamott book (but first I wrote two blog posts, with Faerie supervising).
My left heel hurt in a while different way from having spent the day in high heel pose. A good soak with epsom salts is in order and hope for a better day tomorrow. [Next morning, he got the rest of the annoying thorn or splinter removed. It was almost too small to see but such a relief to have gone.]
I got some plants from Annie’s Annuals and Perennials…my excuse for the order being that I had stepped on the one nice Nicotiana langsdorfii that I had carefully brought through the winter in the greenhouse. It seems thoroughly smushed. So I got three to replace it, and one iochroma, a very handsome tender buddliea-sized shrub. (I have one of those already that may not have made it through winter in the greenhouse.) For years, I thought it was “Lochroma”, because that is what iochrama (starting with an upper case “I”) looks like to me! As always, I admired Annie’s packaging.
You pull the inner box out by the round hole.
Then it unfolds so nicely. Below is after I had removed one two-plant inner box.
The other inner box, with the cardboard supports pulled forward:
Though maybe it is not the best for conserving cardboard, it is certainly gentle on the plants.
The day had been looming, not as tax day, but because it seemed like the right time to plant tomato and cucumber seeds in six packs and put them on the kitchen windowsill and west bedroom windowside plant table, with attempts to protect them from cats.
I don’t much enjoy planting seeds. I did my best to be patient and to enjoy the process.
First, I planted some flats of annuals, mostly cosmos, and some leftover Nicotiana langsdorfii from last year, and a couple more kinds of nicotiana. I decided to wait on the amaranth and foxglove and plant seeds out after frost time is over..
The cosmos amounts were generous, with enough Seashells for 12 six packs and the others with enough for 6…except for my second favourite, Cupcakes and Saucers, which had barely enough for 3! My favourite is Cupcakes, and I couldn’t find anyone selling it, or at least not selling it and enough other seeds I wanted to make a minimum order. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough. My third favourite (used to be my favourite before Cupcakes came along) is Seashells. My least favourite tall one is Sensation, which doesn’t bloom for me till October…and last year Seashells behaved like Sensation. I don’t grow any of the short ones but will probably buy some Sonata from a local nursery for Diane’s garden.
Cupcakes vs. Cupcakes and Saucers:
I even used an actual seed planting mix, expensive compared to potting soil. I forgot to examine it for peat moss; it is very peat moss based. But around here, you can’t find “peat free” potting soil, unless maybe some kind that is $20 plus a bag. And I went so far as to using vermiculate for a topper like a proper seed grower. Or at least a proper British one. I planted the nicotianas in old salad trays because they need heat.
When I bought the N. langsdorfii seeds three yearsago, the packet held what seemed like 1000 teensy seeds. I actually managed to germinate some (but none of the plants in the garden made it through winter; they are rather tender). The two other packets this year (from a different company) held hardly any. I wouldn’t mind except that I find them hard to grow. Pinetree is reasonably priced and usually smaller quantities, which I should have remembered. If they all grow, it will be plenty.
The flower seed flats all went on a long narrow green house bench, cleared off by squeezing other plants together. It is still three or four weeks before I can clear out the greenhouse of all the wintered plants.
My good friend Cheyenne from down the block dropped by.
I stopped him from drinking murky water, so he left.
The crab pot wall next door continued to grow.
I was sore from planting seeds standing up so dragged a chair over to the greenhouse patio, put the tray on that, and sat on my rollator to plant the tomatoes, peppers, cukes and an attempt at celery. It was much more comfy.
I had a few seeds of Tomato ‘Rosella’ left over from last year, which was favourite of Jim “Every day’s a school day” McColl, beloved retired presenter of The Beechgrove Garden (now just called “Beechgrove“) and thus sentimental to me. About retiring at age 84, he said “I just want to grow old in private … but I’ll still garden.”
Our weather is not warm enough to grow tomatoes outdoors, and only small or cherry tomatoes ripen well, even in the greenhouse.
I had sworn to myself that I would do better labelling this year! I planted about four of each variety. Allan brought the trays indoors for me. I did not trust myself not to drop them.
Seed trays on the kitchen window sill, where rows of sticky tape seem to discourage cats:
And on the bedroom plant table, a different attempt to keep cats off:
A ridiculous thing is that I have my mom’s good old three-tiered lighted grow table but have not made anywhere to put it. It could go into the second bathroom (where a bathtub should be, but the former owner of this house removed the tub to make room for her rolltop desk!) but first I need to accomplish the item that has been on my indoor list (along with making a garden map!) for three years, sorting out boxes of paper. Another problem is I do not like bright lights, but pink grow lights might work (will have to research if they work for seeds).
Having boxes or a desk in a bathroom is not as disgusting as it might sound. It’s a biggish room and the toilet is discreetly tucked behind a partition.
Because of not enjoying the seed planting, it was a relief and quite an accomplishment to get it over with.
Allan had taken another photo of the gorgeous Tulip, ‘Leo’.
reading
In the evening, I started a book which, even though it is under 200 pages, I only had time to get halfway through before 9 PM and time for dinner and an episode of Lewis (which we are rewatching after having rewatched Endeavor and Morse).
I have a feeling some people might be cynical about the very tender and sentimental Anne Lamott. I am not, just astounded at how much she reveals of her very private and very human thoughts. Example: “Someone once wrote that there is our public life, our private life, and our secret life, and my secret life now showed.”
“.…other people, especially those who love me most, were somehow seduced by the Annie pheromones, or felt terribly sorry for me, or were obliged to stick around. My terror default from childhood was that critical people were right about my faults. They were being honest, not mean. Any meager good things about me paled in comparison, were outweighed by my character and personalitydisorders.
Trust me, she does not write this in a self-pitying way. I also just love this, during the crisis that she is describing above: “Before bed, I offered myself what I would offer any visitor: a hot bath, an apple, kind words, a good book.”
Maybe I like her so much because I identify with this: “To make this flaw [the need for perfection] worse, some of us grew up in families where mistakes felt like matters of life and death, where you might get the belt or sent to your room without eating (as in my family), which bred the sickness of perfectionism and a lifelong fear of making mistakes, especially in public.” That was my family indeed, where a childish error could lead to black marks on a calendar, which, while not following me literally for the rest of my life, was shown to the guests at a family party (who looked bemused and uncomfortable). I just realised this is why I so much love the phrase from the Ramones movie Rock N Roll High School, a film which not only changed the course of my life (even though I didn’t like some of its humour at ALL and I hated when food was thrown at the lunch ladies), and which gave me the useful phrase “a black mark on your record that will follow your for the rest of your life.” And I guess those calendar black marks did, in my memory. And I guess that is one of the reasons why I love Anne Lamott.
(This post was bracketed by two Annies: Annie’s Annuals and Ann Lamott.)
I went outside to garden in the late morning only to be turned back by a cold wind and what felt like a chilly damp mist (even though the pavement stayed dry). I returned to my comfy chair and finished the book about Buffalo gardens (see yesterday’s post). When that was done, even though I very much wanted to start another book, I thought…it being two o’clock…that I should go out and do something garden-physical for one hour, just for some daily exercise. Even though I felt cold at first, I soon got involved and was out there for four hours.
Past the fish tote kitchen garden…
….I decided to edge some paths and move some more sod to the Willows Loop East path, which is low about halfway down so the easily mowed lawn path has plotzed. Looking south, the path is being shifted to the right by patching in pieces of sod.
The golden glow is Kerria japonica. I remembered finally to dig up and pot a piece for our friend Terri of Markham Farm!
I edged along Center Loop East. The boat shoes I swiped from Allan, which are good for my toe, are not so great for pushing down on a garden tool, but still better than a sore toe.
Muscari by the canoe in center bed:
Before edging some of Center Loop East:
I piled the sod on the rollator and wheeled it to its destination (several times).
Passing by the fire circle, which shows evidence of the horrid wind we had for two days…
Passing the crab pot wall…
…and a tree peony bud…
…and flower buds on enkianthus:
looking north on Willows Loop East
Adding sod to Wllows Loop East:
Center Loop East edged:
Allan helped me reposition the garden bench.
This part of the path still looked too wide…
So I edged some more.
Further progress on Willows Loop East:
I also did some weeding and planting (some tiny seedlings of Eryngium Miss Willmott’s Ghost) and puttering and garden admiring.
Front garden:
pulmonaria (spotted dog)full moon maple leaves and pulmonariaerythronium (dog tooth violet)bright new growth on a pieristhe pale yellow rhododendron that Steve and John gave me
I was amazed to see that the hard to find Tulip ‘Leo’ had come back with one flower.
That is not colour enhanced.
I wished it was open and hoped I could see it on a sunny day…
I was happy to find that Allan had taken a photo of it yesterday. (I got it years ago from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs.)
In the back garden, I had found another better sized dish to go with the orange dish on the new (used) blue pillar, with an ornament, too.
I accidentally took this moody photo of the alders that suggests what a dark and chilly day it was (and somewhat windy).
But puttering and edging had kept my mind off being cold.
Allan tried out the new bug viewer with a harvestman (daddy longlegs):
Yesterday, he mowed the Norwood lawn, today Alicia’s, and I suspect that ours is next.
The garden has reached that moment when the leaves are filling in and the view to the south is becoming completely enclosed, as I like it. Looking down Center Loop West:
I found Skooter and Faerie snoozing in the warm house.
The crocs sandals that I had ordered came, but despite my desire to give my sore toe room, they didn’t work….I felt my foot was slipping out the open back. The same delivery had brought Allan a pair of boat shoes with wide toe room, and they fit me, so I absconded with them (but will buy him a new pair). They have no arch support, which is not good for me (I was born with flat feet) but…lack of toe pain is my priority for gardening.
We did a little project. I took all the plants, about six flats worth, off of the pallet cover that Allan had put on top of the former compost bin one, so that I could pull the pallet forward.
Allan put a temporary top on the temporarily empty bin next to it (now called bin one) and a chunk of wood on the back of each so plants won’t fall through the crack.
Then I reloaded the plants and more plants. By June, I will have had my annual “World’s Longest Garage Sale” garden open and garage/plant sale (Memorial Day Weekend) and will then make bin one (formerly two!) available for compost again.
I planted a few plants. first a ceanothus from Tony in the afternoon sun bed on the other side of the compost bins, with a back drop of an old styrofoam boat that belonged to Allan’s dad, flanked by cut out plywood “boat shapes”.
Ceanothus thyrsiflorus
I found a stray primrose in a pot.
Looks like my new polyganatum is putting out a sprout! To the left of the tag.
If I got rid of all the native foam flower or whatever it is called (I have a mental block about its name…)
…I would have more room for more interesting (to me) plants.
Most of the day, I heard a forklift at the gear shed next door. I was pleased to see the wall of crab pots appearing at our property line.
Allan noticed this tulip…
The white rhododendron is in full flower and the apple tree blossoms are coming on.
reading
I started a book, which I got through interlibrary alone all the way from Texarkana, Texas. The YouTube channel Whispers in the Garden had alerted me to the gardening culture of Buffalo, New York and its garden tours.
It is a gorgeous book….
…which I expected to have in depth visits to a number of Buffalo gardens. It offered plenty of glimpses of the gardens but no in depth coverage of each, although it did have charming stories, like the one about Mary’s garden, named for a beloved wife who died, and hosted by the widower’s second wife, also a gardener. “Annabelle and Jim’s garden is featured in many magazines and on tours because of great plants – the collections of dahlias and exotic annuals – and design. But it’s equally remembered for the lovely, surprising and touching story.”
Although in some ways it turned out to be a how-to garden design book, I was especially interested (because I love garden tours) in the story of the Buffalo Garden Walk.
I was astonished to read that “In Buffalo, what began as a simple neighborhood tour of a handful of gardens grew and grew until it comprised 400 gardens that are visited by some 70,000 people each year over a two-day summer weekend.” (How do they see them all if it is only for two days, I wondered?) Later in the book, a garden gets “at least 3000 visitors on a single July weekend during Garden Walk Buffalo.” My mind was boggled to learn that the garden walk tours are free. “In Buffalo, and other communities with egalitarian garden tours, the tours are more than showing off one’s garden. In Buffalo at least, it’s a matter of civic pride, a community service that gardeners provide to benefit a city they appreciate and of which they are proud.” Also, it is not a competition. “That’s one of the most-asked questions when people experience these Buffalo-style gardens that exceed all expectations. The answer is definitely NO. The gardeners never wanted to compete against each other or to win prizes.” I love that. Except for county fairs and village fete giant veg contests, and maybe some “best garden of the year” British telly shows, I don’t like gardening competitions that would make someone feel their garden was “lesser”. I also just adore this: “Garden Walk Buffalo’s model is unusual. It broke the mold of many garden tours nationwide that show carefully vetted, magazine-worthy gardens, and are often hosted by Federated Garden Clubs, Junior Leagues or chamber of commerce groups. Many such tours were and are one-day events with fees, carefully selected gardens that are often suburban (sometimes called “checkbook” gardens, referring to the reality that some homeowners hire professional landscape designers or landscape architects).” I’ve been to garden tours featuring professional gardens where one after the other, designed by the same outfit, were much the same. I’d love to host a garden tour that was free, or very inexpensive, maybe a benefit for the food bank, with only gardens that are designed and gardened by their not-rich owners, maybe with some help if the gardener is incapable of doing all the work herself. I wish I could go to the Buffalo tour, sounds just perfect to me. “From the beginning, Garden Walk Buffalo has felt more democratic, egalitarian and eclectic than other tours.”
They also have a separate open garden scheme, reminiscent of the ones offered in Portland or the Seattle area with membership to the Northwest Perennial Alliance or Hardy Plant Society of Oregon. It has a small fee for the guide:
“How Open Gardens work: About eighty gardens, spread over two large counties, are open for select hours on Thursdays or Fridays for the month of July. The open hours are set for a cluster of gardens in various regions of the counties. A full-color booklet, available for a small fee, online or from garden centers, provides maps, addresses, descriptions and photos.“
The Garden Walk gardens are not vetted, but the open garden ones are, since people might be driving for thirty minutes to get to one and so the gardens must be able to offer “twenty minutes of interest”, a criteria I have heard before.
I must look up this gardener’s blog; I love his description of his work: “Christopher Carrie (outsideclyde.blogspot.com) refers to himself as ‘a long-time peasant gardener for the well-to-do.'”
Regarding the book’s design tips, a good suggestion is the “Blink Test” where you ask a guest to take a very quick look at your garden, then shut their eyes and tell you what they remember about it.
The “path width primer” was usefu and thought provoking, although I disagree with the advice to put landscape fabric underneath paths…or indeed, anywhere where it might get mucked up with weed roots. And I must quibble with the suggestion of pea gravel, which to me is like a nightmare where you are trying to escape a monster but can’t get up any speed.
I would be thrilled with this path: “One tiny city garden leads visitors right to the back corner to view the compost pile – a good surprise that’s also educational.” I always like finding the compost and work areas in a garden.
“Another path directs guests to a door in the back fence – that’s a trompe l’oeil: It’s a door that goes nowhere, but painted, charming and memorable.” It is good to have a destination, but I am reluctant now to have a path that ends with no escape but to backtrack for quite a distance, ever since a friend complained about having toured a garden where she kept to a path, kind of overgrown but still apparently marked as part of the tour, and came to a dead end. It made her not like the garden at all (and I know it is a good one)! After hearing that, I made some more connecting paths in our Bogsy Wood.
Regarding garden tour guests, I suppose it’s true (but sad, to me) that hardscape wins the most praise. “…people – especially non-gardeners – see and remember the things in your garden more than most of the plants.…décor and hardscape (everything that’s not plants) get three out of four remarks.” And “People who comment on Buffalo-style gardens – whether they’re found in Buffalo itself or in creative people’s yards elsewhere – invariably mention the built objects or large structures. Often the gardeners aren’t even thinking about those things. Yes, they have a pool, or a bridge over the creek – but you came for a garden tour, didn’t you? The gardeners have been deadheading the perennials and potting up tropical plants to get ready. So why are you asking about the bridge?” Or about a specific garden: “…most of all, guests remember the red outdoor sofa, the wall of mirrors, the stunning oversized dining table, the bar, the movie screen on the side of the house, the firepit – and the overall feeling of hospitality.”
I was talking about this briefly with a friend, you know who you are, who is also a garden book author, and she said she likes “the plants to hold center stage.” Same!
As for design style: “Coordinating décor to the style of your home starts with the style question: Do you know what yours is? Colonial, Cape Cod, Craftsman, Victorian, Bungalow, Cabin, Saltbox, Federal, Italianate, Shingle, Tudor, Modern, Ranch, Spanish Colonial? There are dozens more, and subsets and mashups of each.” How about a shabby old 1979 double wide?
But lookie! I think those are the same red plastic chairs of which I have two, second hand from former client Patti’s Seaview garden.
On a page with good suggestions about finding “cheap and cheerful” garden objects, the same advice is given that I read in Liz Zorab’s book, Grounded, earlier this week: “The one recommendation I would make with trash treasures is only take things that you know you have a purpose for and can use within a couple of weeks. Otherwise you’re just collecting others’ trash and storing it at your own home.” But…a couple of weeks? I have some excellent ingredients for …years…that I know I will use…someday.
Finally, I may at last have found the author of one of my favourite gardening saying, which I have heard as “Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts.”
And I love this story because the same happened to me, in reverse, one day when I was gardening at Andersen’s RV Park and a German guest came to the fence to talk to me.
I am sorry to say we are not expecting any full days of reading weather (rain!) this week. I still have a daunting stack of library books.
Again, we had rain overnight but no reading weather during most of the day.
I sifted leaf mold, compost, and coir to finish mulching the garden boat.
compost bin three
My audience:
After mulching inside the aft section of the garden boat, I dug up some big Sanguisorba ‘Pink Elephant’ clumps from the front garden, where there are too many. It took quite a big effort.
Before:
My grevillea victoriae looks sad after our hard winter.
After. The light was poor. I got rid of some scilla, too, and must go back for more.
Here is a better after photo, two days later on a cloudy day:
Erythronium at the front of that bed
When Allan returned from some errands, he got into the garden boat and planted a big clump of Sanguisorba ‘Pink Elephant’ for me.
Meanwhile, I had moved some plants around. A Watsonia from big planter in the front garden went to one of the new half circle beds in back. It may or may not still be alive.
I cleaned up a pot of this grass and divided it in two. No photo of the plant, just the tag, oops.
Well, it is a small grass but a great tag from Far Reaches Farm. (Later: Here’s what a small piece looks like:)
Would be easily pulled by mistake!
I got two huge unwelcome columbines out of two troughs by the water boxes, something I had been meaning to do for two years. First trough:
In the second trough, another great tag, from Dan Hinkley:
Second trough:
My supervisor pointed out that I did not get the entire root of the columbine, so I will have to keep battling it.
I moved a dianthus that had been swamped to a newly redone trough in the front garden.
A friend gave me a slightly broken bird bath stand, for which I need to find a bigger top than the orange bowl I managed to find for now.
Some garden admiration:
Yellow woodland poppy:
From Jane, the Mulch Maid!
This might a veratrum, which would be quite a thrill:
Maybe there is another veratrum sprouting on the bank of the deep swale!
I live in hope; can’t get close till the swale dries up.
A primula by the deep path! Looking south into the bogsy wood.
Tulips:
Allan made a video of the frog chorus by the ponds which you can watch and listen to here, although no frogs make themselves shown; they are very elusive..
The promised rainy reading weather stopped at mid morning, rather to my disappointment.
As often happens when I am taken by surprise by good weather, I turned to a compost project. I had decided to put some of the assorted clumps of different kinds of sanguisorbas, including one I had to move while shifting a path and some others that had reseeded too vigorously. It can be a pest of a plant and yet is one of my favourites. I had already put one big clump in the boat and needed to build up with mulch around it.
I made a mixture in the wheelbarrow of sifted coir, sifted compost from bin three, and sifted leaf mould. Bin three, before:
Leaf bin has some good “mouldy” parts:
We have been fortunate to be given blocks of coir from two different friends who were downsizing their gardening ambitions. One block had been soaking in a bucket and was easy to break apart.
First barrow ready to go to the garden boat:
A photo of the boat I took a few days ago:
The soil had gotten quite low and now, after adding two semi-barrowloads of mixed mulch, the front section is fuller and fluffier.
Skooter loves to have Allan let him out the front door so he can walk around to the compost and potting area and ask to be let in the back door.
In tidying up the potting area now that I have reorganised the kitchen compost and leaf mould bins, I found a big item we’d salvaged from a debris pile at the port: a weather station thingie that used to be wired to a boat.
Allan refreshed it with some black spray paint, next to his handsome white rhododendron.
It opens pinkish and turns pure white.
He thought we would have to dig a hole, but I’d had the brainstorm of sticking the pole into one of the little corner pockets of one of the fish totes, with some bamboo sticks jammed in to hold it tight. It worked great, and was so easy!
That wonderful debris pile near the boatyard, where we got so much good wood and other stuff, is no more. I miss it!
I am well chuffed by figuring out where to put that thing.
I did a bit of edging on Center Loop East.
There is a lot more edging and shaping to do. I got just enough sod for a path project.
I used the sod on Willows Loop East, where I am shifting a path to the left so that the hedge of box leaf honeysuckle doesn’t have to be trimmed.
Before:
I didn’t think of this project early enough to move the blueberry. I will move it next autumn, and next year, the path can go right next to the red fish tote, which is kind of a useless little corner to have any sort of garden at ground level.
After:
I know from long experience of pathing paths together that this will soon knit into a very acceptable grass path. And the part next to the hedge that has gotten all mucked up with dirt during my big weeding job will have the grass grow through pretty soon.
Looking east from the path over the bed that is no longer choked with weeds, and which is much more full of good, tall plants than it looks right now:
Out of the area which became path, I’d had to dig some clumps of narcissi, which I moved “in the green” (which they like just fine) over to the west side of the garden.
Willows Loop West:
In the greenhouse, a banana is unfurling and Salvia africana-lutea and the Australian mint tree are blooming. I so look forward to May when I can bring them out into the garden.
Salvia africana-lutea foliage smells deliciously of root beer.
Tangly Cottage Gardening 