beach approach, day three (and more)

First on our daily agenda: The check up on the progress at Olde Towne Coffee. It is surprising how much I miss it being open even though these days I would not even have time to go!

They’re still moving in!

And then….we finally got the tree pocket gardens and the planters on First Avenue in Ilwaco clipped and weeded.

Narcissi in the boatyard garden

I love the way this golden marjoram looks right now.

As always, yellow to match the Portside Café

And then….to Long Beach, but before we got back to the beach approach, other tasks beckoned, in particular, tidying up the parking lot berms one block to the east of the main street.

before and after (Stipa gigantea, my favourite ornamental grass)

All we had time for was trimming the worst messes; weeds at ground level are dire but remain a task for another day.

The temperature had dropped, a chill wind had come up, and we had to put our jackets on. Allan went out to get back to the beach approach weeding, but I needed to walk around town and deadhead spent and unpleasant looking narcissi from the planters and parks.

There was some evidence of finger blight (theft of flowers):

please don’t pick the tulips!

more picking and a bulb pulled out

I think people try to pull a flower, or break and take the stem, and the bulb comes out.

Excuses I have heard for finger blight:

“I have to pick a flower when I see a pretty girl that needs one.” (NOT referring to me!)

“I just had my wedding on the beach and had to pick a bouquet.” (This young woman had her arms full of every tulip in bloom from the beach approach garden on that day, back before the deer discovered those species tulips.)

The same woman, who was the daughter of a local (now out of business) restaurateur, also told me, “I’m making work for you because the city will hire you to plant more!”

“It’s just a few”, to which of course the answer is if everyone picked a few, there would be none for the rest of the passersby to enjoy.

Anyway….Aside from finger blight, I worrited over the rain spotted and pitiful appearance of the tulip foliage in the downtown planters.

ghastly leaves

They get terribly beat up by the weather, but when they start to bloom, the later tulips fill in the gap between narcissi and annuals and provide colour for the parade that is always the first Sunday in May.

so glorious in bloom

tulips

tulips

I did have a brainstorm today though…I am going to make sure to follow through carefully on my half-baked method of planting the big tulips to the inside and species tulips to the outside of the planter array….so that I can yank ALL the big ones every year, because they are never as good the second year anyway (whereas the species tulips can multiply).

I like the new primrose in bloom that Allan brought back from Seattle’s Emerald City Gardens:

dark leaved primrose

Along with the tulip foliage problem, I also pondered how some of the planters still have too much, perhaps, of the original plantings done back in the days of different volunteers doing each planter. I get tired of thinning the vigorous white Achillea in one of them; over the winter, it again took over the whole planter:

Yarrow

And the planter in front of one of the arcades still has shrubs, planted by a volunteer, that look exciting right now but are dull green blobs during the height of tourist season…and are intermingled with mint!

spring azalea planter

I’ve been redoing some of the older planters, but just cannot decide about the one above.

We recently mulched under all the trees and the pocket gardens look refreshed.

tree garden

another tree garden

After checking on all the trees, planters, and parks, I joined Allan on the beach approach garden, where he had tackled the horrible section infested with rush. We only managed to get that one section done, and so we do not feel much closer to the arch than we did yesterday…

where we were at the end of yesterday…

and how far we got today (pitiful!!!)

I did practice saying “no” to something when the parks manager asked us today if when we get the whole thing weeded, would we like to mulch it…or something like that…and I said while I would love to have it mulched, the city crew would have to do it because we still have four private gardens we have not even been to yet this year and we just do not have time…

The only thing that got me through that last hour or two of weeding on the beach approach was a special treat from the Cottage Bakery. They were out of tiger paws, but the nice man made us custom tiger paws out of Persians with chocolate and maple frosting! “We like to take care of our locals,” he said.

custom made fuel for hard, cold work

I have almost forgotten to whine about how cold it was on the approach. Cold, windy, miserably chilly….just the sort of weather I try to avoid out there, and I never would have made it through a whole day; would have gone somewhere less windy instead.

On the way home, we trimmed up most of the planters on Sid Snyder Drive, the other beach approach, and oh my, was it cold…But crocosmia and grasses desperately needed to be cut back in all those planters, also once done by volunteers and still with an odd assortment of plants. I was so glad to be done, at 7:15…

In reminiscing about the dreadful cold wind, I almost forgot to add that Allan took these charming photos yesterday of narcissi blooming on the edge of the approach lawn, where we dump weeds from the garden.

gone wild