Then we answered the call of Jo, who had rung this morning with a request for some midwinter clean up of her cottage garden in Long Beach. I have never seen so many pine needles in her garden…must have been because of the huge windstorm we had in December. A thick fog had rolled in overnight and lasted all day, and I kept hearing a disembodied whiny voice saying things like “I’m so sore!” and “It’s too cold” and eventually realized said voice was, regrettably, mine. Eventually, I became absorbed enough in the moment of gardening that I forgot my complaints. Allan raked the garden free of pine needles while I pulled out dead pelargoniums (annual geraniums) from the window boxes and then did an extensive removal of small weeds.
Jo’s garden has almost no winter interest other than the attractive fences and arbours and a few shrubs. She likes all the perennials cut down neatly in the fall and prefers to save room for an explosion of colour in spring and summer rather than tasteful winter evergreens. Her garden now looks quite bare but in summer is so beautiful that you would practically weep with joy to walk in the gate…Indeed, a friend told her last year that the beauty of the garden did bring tears to her eyes. It is the most exuberant and perfect-in-each-detail cottage garden that I have ever seen or had the pleasure of weeding.
I got to pet two charming dogs today, one a Yorkie named Cinnamon and one a fat white-muzzled black lab mix named Katie. We wonder about ToMo, one of our favourite walking-by dogs who we see sometimes in Long Beach…a friendly Akita who drags her human over to us. ToMo is getting old and we have not seen her yet this year. As is often the case, I know the dog’s name but not the person’s. (My trick for remembering ToMo’s name…which is Japanese…is “She’s a big dog; she can tow mo’.”)
My friend Sheila has hurt her back, and I feel much sympathy as she was looking forward to a vigorous post-Mexico return to her Oregon garden next week. And those Phormiums I gave to our city friend were responsible for her back being out of whack today….so do be careful, sister gardeners!
Oh, and we got the car stuck in soft ground at the City Works dump site….Allan had to unhook the trailer to get us out of there…It would have been embarrassing to have to call a city truck for rescue.
[…] which tends to be neglected. We had intended to do a partial day at the Boreas and then go on to Jo’s garden next door, but as often happens our plan went astray and by six in the evening we knew that Jo’s […]
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[…] we finally made it to Jo’s for the first spring clean up of her year. Her garden in Long Beach is one of the easiest for spring clean up as Jo has no fondness for […]
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[…] that is completely unfenced and a few deer pretty much live in, so our plant choice is limited. Jo’s garden (center, above) is a perfect fantasy cottage garden that was an enormous hit on the Peninsula […]
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[…] Long Beach, I still gardened for Jo, the daughter of Maxine who had given me my first gardening job on the Long Beach […]
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[…] off to Jo’s to again to work on fulfilling another dream of someone who came to our garden on tour last year […]
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