22 March: charity and friendship

Saturday, 22 March 2014

This event benefits local soup kitchens.

We just made it to the line for Empty Bowls 2014 in time to hear the end of the drumming performance.

the line at 11 AM

I must remember to go see this garden in summer sometime.

 

inside: the room of bowls

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.

Allan picked the duck bowl.

star bowls

picking a bowl

raffle table. We tried to win the set of three but no luck!

Soup donated by local restaurants. Egg flower was our favourite.

 

volunteer servers

Our bowls (I bought two). I like the grown up bowls because they fit well in the cupboard.

second from left: Pam, activities director from Golden Sands Assisted Living

comparing bowls

our gardening client Cheri of Discovery Coast Real Estate

friend and local artist Joe Chasse

Jamie arrives!

Jamie picking a bowl

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.

Antique Gallery Too! on Spruce; Larry and Robert’s other shop is on Lake.

in the antique shop

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.

looking in from Lake Street

Disporum catoniense ‘Night Heron’ in our garden today

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.

Tides West, ocean on one side, Loomis Lake on the other

The long body of Loomis Lake runs up the mid-center of the Peninsula, as do smaller lakes and sloughs.

the wetland center of the ‘Ninsula

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 new abode

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.

view from east side porch with large evergreen huckleberry

covered west side deck

view from west side porch

garden shack

“Welcome to our nook of the woods.”

Someone loved, enjoyed, and decorated this place and I find it terribly poignant that they’ve had to leave it.

There’s a fireplace and a fire circle.

wood for campfires

porch, chairs, bottle tree, fire circle

Inside, the landlords won’t allow J9 to paint the panelling…

the hallway

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.

how to brighten up paneling if you can’t paint it.

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.

Overwhelmingly garage-y

a house much more to my liking

This house has a prime position next to the community park.

J9 can walk here in about one minute.

boats at the ready in the park

community park

community park dock

Loomis Lake looking south

and north to private docks

Magnolia tree on the way back to J9’s

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.)

success!

 

cat door

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.)

Ed’s abode

Ed’s front garden

The progress of Ed’s Gunnera made me suddenly very worried about mine.

Buddy, J9’s cat, walked with us and explored Ed’s front porch.

between house and garage

an excellent company

And then we went home, where I walked straight out to the edge of the bogsy wood to look at my own Gunnera.

Oh dear, I think I need a new one.

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.

a bed of gold

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.)

a package

beautifully wrapped

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!

happy, and soon to be happier, me!

Tomorrow: back to the planting of sweet peas here and there.