The gardening tasks repeat from year to year. I’d think no one would want to read the same story over and over, yet as a gardener I find it endlessly fascinating to watch the cycles repeat on Moosey’s Country Garden.
The hydrangea jobslowed the beginning of our rounds of spring clean up. At last, at the beginning of March, we got to Klipsan Beach Cottages to cut back the many sword and deer ferns.
Allan, being the agile one, balanced over the island pond to trim the fronds that dangle gracefully over the waterfalls. This same task would be repeated at Discovery Heights, our own garden, Laurie’s garden, The Boreas Inn, and on a smaller scale at each job that had just a few ferns to clip. The new fronds unfurling are a sure sign of spring and if one does not cut the old ones while the new are still dormant, it’s a tricky and finicky job that takes much longer.
Animals large and small can be a welcome distraction in chilly weather.
The Red Barn Arena always provided us with some equine entertainment.
And here’s the elusive George, so large and attractive but so practices at skittering out of the way whenever I got within hands-width of petting him.
I’m trying to firmly implement the revelation of June 2007 and only take on new jobs with CPNs (certified plant nuts) or with clients who will give me free reign. Oman Builder’s Supply in Ocean Park hired us to do a little garden in front of their new store. Opening day would honour the late David Fritts, longtime hardware store employee who had had a strong vision of the Ocean Park store remodel and longtime Ilwaco city councilman. We had one day to get the new garden together and to fulfill the “lots of colour” request planted runs of primroses and violas from the Basket Case Greenhouse along with fresh little lavenders.
In late winter I fret about getting the clean-ups done especially since so many of our jobs are in the public eye. Just when we thought we might have work under control, weather intervened. In late March a surprise snow fall caught us while working at Klipsan Beach Cottages (here, light snow at the A Frame) and as we drove home we stopped at several jobs to take photos of whitened gardens.
By the time we got to Long Beach, the snow had become thick enough to be photogenic.
Photographing the Bolstadt Beach approach gave me a sharp, windy chill.
The weeding of this long garden loomed ahead of us but we found it hard to imagine doing it anytime soon.
Giant snowflakes fell on the Shelburne garden in Seaview. The bright fresh Hyacinth flowers looked well hunkered down as if their shoulders were cold.
In Ilwaco the yellow narcissi we had planted to echo the exterior of the Portside Café barely showed under their heavy white burden.
Usually a late snow melts before I can get home to photograph my own garden all white and pretty. On this occasion, we made it home in good time. Our lower entry garden was a study in brown and white.
By 2010 the Phormium by the entrance to the stream path had grown so large we had to remove it; the above photo reminds me of why I once loved Phormiums so. This particular one had blades of a rich smoky hue.
I still remember the cold pure smell of the spring water surrounded by snow.
Inside the house the temperature was perhaps even more bitter than outside. After the removal in 2006 of a faulty and scary propane heat stove, we rarely managed to get the temperature above fifty in the winter and spent many a foul weather hour in front of the parabolic heater. One step away from its arc and we might as well have been in a tent. Only the earliest morning to early afternoon sun fell upon the house and shade drew in by two in the afternoon. But oh, the view from that arched window.
From the loft window where Allan had his desk we could see over the spruce tree and the Ilwaco boatyard to the working end of town blanketed with snow. Then with the heater pointed right at me, layered in softer clothes than for outside but just as many layers and with the fingerless gloves on, I settled into a welcome indoor afternoon of reading and the social internet (and probably some games of Scrabulous).
By the next day, spring had returned.
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