Tuesday, 22 October, 2013
At last a truly easy workday. We began with a stop at our excellent accountant, Jennifer Hopkins, to discuss some figures pertaining to the Affordable Care Act. I always appreciate how she has attractive plant containers outside her office. In the early spring, while our Ilwaco planters are choked with bulb foliage that must be allowed to die back, her containers totally show us up! Today we missed her dog Helen, who was taking the day off.
Then, on to The Red Barn.
We weeded the narrow fence garden and the barrels. I thought of cutting down the Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, above, but decided it has some autumnal feeling and should stay till after Halloween.
Next door at Diane’s, the roadside garden looks tidy but I wish it had filled in more. I think that my plan to mulch it with cow fiber will give it more vigor next year.
The pale pink heathers, which were Diane’s inspiration for wanting this garden, bloomed rather briefly. The lavenders never really took off, but the rosemary (in background, below) did well.
In my constant thoughts re privacy if I were to get a noisy neighbour next door, I pondered the Leyland cypress hedge (if that is what it is) between Diane and Larry’s and the Red Barn field. There is much debate about whether this would be a good idea or a disaster, but surely it would block noise AND light.
Diane likes pastels, as you can see.
One of my good friends was at home there and we had a happy visit.
We had a brief, shall we say comfort break at the Fifth Street Park restrooms. Next to the doors, Rose ‘Super Dorothy’ is still blooming wonderfully, while plain old Dorothy Perkins, on the other side of the park, is pitiful, flowerless, sickly and mildewed, as always.
The schizostylis (either ‘Viscountess Byng’ or ‘Mrs. Haggerty’) glowed in the pale sunlight on the east side of the restroom building. We won’t cut back the Helianthus till it looks just terrible, because it hides the weedy mess behind the restrooms….a jungle of horrible unkempt pampas grass which I have made pretty clear is Not My Problem. This garden area is exceedingly damp, and it has been hard to get anything to grow large here.
Yes, a pale, misty, cool sunlight made me very very happy today. When we got to our next job, I was able to put on a flannel overshirt. Joy and comfort indeed!
At last, we got back to Erin’s house. We’d promised this visit back in late September, and then had company, and rain, and then catching up after the rain, and then the hydrangea job! We worked on the garden by the cottage, not by the very big house.
Erin’s cat appeared for a visit….
The cottage garden job was a straightforward fall cleanup.
The camera angle makes that arbour look more tilted than it was at the beginning, but it really is not. In fact, I lightened up the honeysuckle (which really has to be removed so the arbour can be fixed, but that reality makes Erin sad, so we will leave that to the carpenter). Note that the shiny sunshine went away over the course of our time there, and the afternoon became deliciously and gloriously cool and grey.
In the cottage garden we find two problems: shade cast by large trees, and way too many groundcovers. I am sure each was planted, probably by previous tenant Paul, from nice little pots looking ever so pretty, but now sweet woodruff and oxalis and Japanese anemone have become problems, all up in everyone else’s business.
Now that Erin has the huge sunny lot of the big house for a garden, we won’t have to keep trying to grow sun loving plants in the cottage garden. But we will have to have another deer-friendly garden, like Marilyn’s, on the big lot…
My idea is to have two big flower beds, one running east to west where the deer are, with a wide path to walk next to the fence, and another echoing it on the other side of the enormous lot. There will be plenty of open space in the center. I have been wondering lately if it would be unwise to use the newspaper garden construction method if irrigation pipes for the sprinkler system ran underneath. You can see one sprinkler head to the right, above, and I am happy to say that Erin believes there is no piping between that line of sprinklers (east to west) and the fence. So bring on the newspapers…when we can find the time!
This project will require so much newspaper, I had better start asking my local friends to save paper for us.
On the way home, we poked at the Ilwaco planters (four of them out of…quite a few) to see if they need watering. Oh how we do not want to have to do that job! But we think it must be done on Thursday. They are only faintly damp, and there is no rain in the five day forecast…
In closing, here is an evening photo from yesterday, taken by Allan outside our house. I did not have it in time for yesterday’s blog.
I loved the relaxed cat. Avoid a leylandii hedge like the plague
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Oh dear. What would be your favourite deer and wind resistant privacy hedge? It only has to be about twenty feet long.
Sent from my iPhone
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Judy thinks it is something other than Leylandii. She is going to try to ID it.
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