Friday, October 4, 2013
South end days have more work time because of less of a commute.. We started with Mayor Mike’s house just a few blocks to our east.
I like it that the mayor lives in a “double wide” just like we do.
Our first job would have been even closer if I had remembered that we had dropped off, the evening before, two half buckets of gravel for a tiny project at Larry and Robert’s garden less than a block to our west. But I did not remember till dusk.
When we stopped off at home to put some of the compostable debris from Mike’s into our clippings piles, I saw the blooming Aster lateriflorus ‘Prince’ near the driveway.
I realized that what with the rain, I had been spending very little time in my own garden.
A dahlia near the debris pile caught my eye…and next to it a stunning clematis that has been blooming on and off all summer.
Nearby, I found a baby artichoke. I wonder if there will be time for it to get large enough to eat.
Smokey wished I would stay home (and so did I).
But we had things to do in Long Beach town.
The west side of city hall has two escallonias (one Pink Princess, one white Iveyi) that have gotten too big (my fault). I don’t want them scraping at the building during wind storms.
They were pushing out too far on the sidewalk side, as well. I had already trimmed them back a bit just awhile ago. Now, if they had been in my garden, I would just have cut them almost to the ground and let them come back. (Not quite true: In my garden, they are planted where they can get to full size…proof this planting was far from my wisest choice. Live and learn.) But I thought that would be too shocking to passersby. So I pruned the one at the north end of the bed into a more tree like, cleaned up form, and figured that later, when light that now can get to the inside gets more foliage to break out, I would cut it down. It came out looking all right, but unfortunately the one at the south side proved to have such an ugly trunk shape that we DID have to cut it most of the way down.
Drat. Now my plan is to chop down the one on the north end as soon as the weather gets bleaker. Phooey.
While we were pruning, an acquaintance from the past, the daughter of the late Don Woodcock who once lived in Seaview, stopped by to visit and said she reads my blog. How in the world did she find it, I asked, and she said something like “I’m nosy”. I laughed, because I have been known to Google people. I was pleased to learn that Don’s grand old Seaview house, The Sandcastle, is now a lived in family home again. It and the Collie House are my favourite two Seaview houses. I promised her I would stop by and take a new photo of the house. I had noticed on driving by that the yard is looking cared for and pruned and all spruced up lately.
Across the street, our next door neighbours from Starvation Alley Cranberry Farm have some great new signage on their new coffee/juice shop.
I wonder if Jared and Jessika (who live right next door to our house) would notice if I stole “mission control” for one of our Tangly Cottage signs.
While I’m writing about admiration of artistry, here is one of the many mosaic tiles by Renee O’Connor that are set into the sidewalk along Beach Boulevard Street and the Bolstadt Beach Approach.
This one reminded me that it is a clam digging weekend and that we should check the condition of the planters along the beach approach roads, so we did that next.
We did some clean up of wind toppled Cosmos at the Boreas Inn and some impatient deadheading of Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly’ at the Long Beach welcome sign.
We had just one more plant (a blue oat grass) to pop into the newly cleared (formerly Pampas Grass) area in front of Marie Powell’s studio in Ilwaco.
When we got home, I decided I must make a twilight tour of the garden because I was behind on my plant appreciation.
In the last of daylight, I picked some more tomatoes and peppers from the greenhouse and some Cox’s Orange Pippin apples from our young apple tree. How I love that I HAVE the very British Cox’s Orange Pippin apple… It is susceptible to disease but oh how delicious. I read somewhere that the Pacific Northwest is the only place where it will grow as well (or almost as well) as it does in England. We got the tree at Brim’s Farm and Garden in Astoria. I may be picking these apples a bit too early, but I am afraid they will fall off the tree as it is heavily laden for its small size…and supposedly they will ripen more indoors.
I am very impressed with the bell peppers grown in the greenhouse!
We have to work on Saturday but I do hope for Sunday off to spend some time in our own garden.
Red Salvia some thing or other, love it !
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With Judy (above), I ♥ your writing style. “Behind on my plant appreciation” and “? or ??” are two more examples that made me smile.
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Thanks!!!
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That’s a very lovely clematis.
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