Saturday, 22 March 2014
We just made it to the line for Empty Bowls 2014 in time to hear the end of the drumming performance.
Local potter Karen Brownlee spearheads this event, organizing the creation, firing and glazing. Professional and amateur adult potters and students from local schools make the bowls.
We would like to have sat with Jamie for awhile, but we had to go help J9 move into her new rental. She’s an old friend who left the beach for two years, could not bear to be away and recently returned. We met her at the storage unit next door to Larry’s antique store in Ilwaco, and I nipped into the shop for a moment to get some photos for the Antique Gallery Facebook page.
I then joined Allan and J9 in loading. Here, we were almost ready for our first trip, and I’m happy to report that we made it halfway up the Peninsula to J9’s new digs without incident.
Between the first and second, smaller load, we stopped at home to pick up a large planter that J9 had left behind when she moved away. It struck me how perfectly springlike our front garden looked at that moment.
I tore myself away so we could finish with the moving project. J9’s new place is a single wide manufactured home less than half a block from Loomis Lake, in a neighbourhood called Tides West.
The long body of Loomis Lake runs up the mid-center of the Peninsula, as do smaller lakes and sloughs.
Except for the wealthier houses right on the lake and on the ocean side, Tides West is an affordable neighbourhood including many single and double wide manufactured (modular) homes. I remember a local story in which someone asked a city person why in the world she had bought a manufactured home here. Then the questioner visited and said “I understand now,” seeing that in all but the historic districts of the local towns, manufactured homes are common here.
J9’s place has a charming yard, not a garden, a simple green landscape with decks and one of my favourite yard accoutrements, rustic outbuildings.
Someone loved, enjoyed, and decorated this place and I find it terribly poignant that they’ve had to leave it.
Inside, the landlords won’t allow J9 to paint the panelling…
The kitchen is painted white and it makes such a huge difference. Painting the panelling was the first thing we did when we moved into our dark old manufactured house. J9 came up with a good solution: She gently affixed white trellises to the walls.
While Allan installed the cat door he’d made and helped adjust some of the trellis pieces, I took a walk to the lake, less than a minute away. Just at the end of J9’s street sit some modern, boxy lakeside homes that didn’t thrill me as much as her humble single wide did.
When I got back to our friend’s house, I found Allan very pleased as the cat door he had built fit perfectly. (It’s a purchased cat door fitted into a clear wood framed panel to go into a sliding window space.)
With the move done, we stopped by the home where J9 has been staying. It happens to be right across the street from our friend Ed Strange’s garden. We took ourselves on a tour (with his permission; he was out working.)
And then we went home, where I walked straight out to the edge of the bogsy wood to look at my own Gunnera.
I managed to prune the dead tips off of the Leycesteria ‘Golden Lanterns’ and then I felt quite done with gardening for the evening. As usual, Allan had more energy than I and he mowed the lawn.
Indoors, I examined an intriguing belated birthday present from Lisa and Buzz; Lisa (former client of Crank’s Roost garden, now of the bayside house of 300 hydrangeas) had dropped it off earlier in the day as we were on our way out. (It’s not her fault the present was belated; I was secretive about my birthday this year.)

with a delightful card. The inscription inside was so sweet and flattering that I would seem to be boasting if I shared it 😉
From the shape of the present (which was wrapped in lovely calendar pages), I thought it might be a nice bottle of wine, but LOOK! My very favourite tipple!
Tomorrow: back to the planting of sweet peas here and there.
I’ve missed a lot. Hope to catch up – but maybe I’ll only be able to “STAY up”. I like the photos of interiors & exteriors. I’m intrigued by 39’s rustic outbuildings and think Ed’ place is interesting, too. I’m not much into cookie-cutter landscapes & houses, so I really enjoy the individuality and whimsy of your friends’ homes and yards…
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What a fun event the Empty Bowls must be. So many colorful and imaginative bowls to choose from. I love the one you chose with the orange inside. I’m a bit worried about my Gunnera too. It has declined in size every year since I planted it. I tried to give it a boggy spot by lining a big hole with plastic, but I don’t think it worked. I should have just picked a better spot that gives it actual boggy conditions. Maybe I’ll try again, it’s such a cool plant. That cat door that Allan built is brilliant!
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Ed’s Gunnera is not even in a boggy spot and doing great. Am wondering if cold freeze and wet feet are too much for a Gunnera.
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That looks like a really nice community park. I love still water.
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