Never in my old garden did I have as many visitors as we do in our garden on Lake Street. It’s a much more comfortable garden, being in light rather than shade and flat rather than extremely up and down. Garden tour perfection lingered well into the fall and made it a paradise to be in.
At the end of July, the granddaughter of our friend and client Lorna (Andersen’s RV Park) visited with her mom and grandma. We had to work that day, but Lorna sent us this photo and message: “The Bestest Garden I’ve Ever Been to AWARD. So designated by Ellie Anna Follis on Sunday, July 29, 2012. She loved the kitty with the fluffy tail, all the little doors, the cups trees, the doors in the fence, the purple tree…….. All the things her grandmother loved. Thank you so much for letting me take them there!!”
Our campfire was a good gathering spot on a late July evening with our friends Don and Jenna and their son Joe. I was so not a social animal in the old garden that this was especially pleasing to me and I hope to do a lot more campfires in 2013.
On August 8th, our friend Lisa of Crank’s Roost came to visit with two friends and sampled the Sugar Ann peas growing in the wire fence. (Growing them is easy; finding time to pick and eat them proved to be much harder.)
Lisa brought two friends, one of whom took photographs with a large and impressive camera. I’ll post his photos (with permission) in my following entry.
On August 11th, I informally opened the garden for friends who had not been able to make it on tour day. Wendy Murry of Jake the Alligator Man fame (she organizes his annual birthday party) came to visit with her daughter Avery and some adult friends. Avery had been to the tour of our previous garden back in 2008 and still remembered being entranced by Allan’s flower pot water wheel. Neither she nor her mother were too old to appreciate the fairy doors in the bogsy wood.
Wendy’s friends truly GOT the garden; they were wonderful guests.
Wendy took some photos as well which I will share in the next entry.
Also on August 11th Sarah Sloane came by. We had met on garden tour day and talked for awhile. She’s new to the Peninsula but was a well known garden designer back in Rhode Island. Just out of kindness, she brought me one of her topiaries.
Sarah’s topiaries will be for sale this spring at NIVA green (my most favourite ever art and gift shop) in Long Beach, and she has also recently published a children’s fantasy novel called The Marble Game which is available at NIVA green and at Time Enough Books at the Port of Ilwaco.
Fred and Nancy from The Basket Case Greenhouse came to visit on our August 11th Open Day; Fred had also been here on tour day but Nancy had been out of town and missed it.
We also took them four doors down to see Tom and Judy’s, where Fred and Nancy recognized every Basket Case plant in the Hornbuckle garden where the plants are not all jumbled together as they are in mine.
Allan was not here on the 11th (off to his dad’s birthday party in Seattle) so I made sure to get photos to show him that everyone admired his fern garden.
I delighted in the visit from Mary of Klipsan Beach Cottages, truly a dream gardening client, and her mom (also Mary) and their friend Joanie. Mary had been stuck with cleaning cottages on tour day as often happens when one runs a resort.
We also trekked down to Tom and Judy’s so that Mary and Mary could see the exquisite Hornbuckle courtyard; there is a private courtyard by the KBC residence that is similar in size.
Visitors arrived on and off through the rest of the summer, sometimes asking to visit while we were at work, sometimes (and more fun for us) when we were at home. On August 18th our good friend and great gardener Patti from Seaview, three members of her family, and her adorable new puppy, Cosby.
On September 19th another client, Jo from Long Beach, came by with friends. Her mother had been my very first gardening client back in 1993 when I lived at the Sou’wester, Maxine was half a block away and admired the garden I created there. She snagged me to weed her garden, and Jo followed, and then from word of mouth a whole gardening business was born.
Later the same day, Stymie came to visit Frosty. (Judy brought him.) Frosty, a cat we adopted the previous January (more on this some time later), grew up with dogs and wants to have a dog friend. Stymie found this unusual and interesting.
(At the end of August, Judy brought the much smaller Beep to meet Frosty and Beep found it rather startling to meet a cat bigger than he, especially when Frosty started licking Beep’s ears.)
To conclude the excellent visiting day of August 19th, Tom and Judy returned in the evening with their neighbours Larry and Robert, proprietors of two Ilwaco antique stores. We had made a garden for the Larry and Robert home, just across Pearl Avenue from Tom and Judy’s. And we had plans to expand their garden in the fall and wanted to show them our garden boat. We sat on the patio till well after dark. (Should have realized we were in for a long chat and started a campfire!)
On August 24th my friend of 34 years, Carol, came with her friend Vernetta from Seattle for Kite Festival and came to see the garden. On Carol’s last visit we were on our way to the Sylvia Beach Hotel in rain and wind and the garden was not very walkable.
To close the busiest part of the summer visiting season we had another fire, again with Don, Jenna, and Joe on September 1st.
We lit the way to the fire with a row of little artificial candles and it looked pretty magical. Next summer I want to remember how much fun it is to take some time off and actually enjoy our own garden instead of working seven days a week.
Thanks to all the guests who helped to make 2012 a wonderful time in the garden and for visiting it in its summer of perfection.
[…] thing that has helped me a great deal is to move from our former multi-level garden to a new flat one; I now can garden after work in the summer without being daunted by knee pain going up and down […]
LikeLike
[…] up to NIVA green (New, Vintage, Inspired, Artful). Our friend Sarah Sloane, who we met when she toured our garden last summer, had her beautiful topiaries for sale outside the […]
LikeLike