Monday, 14 April 2014
This weekend will be a big event in Long Beach, the newly revived Razor Clam Festival; this year one of the giant frying pans will be used to create clam fritters. So we have to get the parks where the events will take place to look just spiffing.
We started with the quadrant of parks on Fifth Street.
The garden in front of Captain Bob’s Chowder consumed a lot of my time; it has the very annoying wild garlic (some sort of maddeningly horrid Allium with dull flowers, that reseeds like mad), and old bulb foliage, and horsetail, and the dead foliage tips of the good alliums. Oddly, the bad allium loves this park and the good ones don’t do all that well in here. In the center, a big Phlomis fruticosa (Jerusalem sage) died to the ground and is struggling to return, so it’s all very sad looking right now. Next month, the Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and the Nepeta (catmint) and other perennials will make it lovely…too late for clam fest!
The day was one of those thoroughly miserable early spring VERY cold and strong north wind days. I was not a happy worker. The nicest part of the day was when we planted (well, I placed and Allan planted) some new perennials in the bed in the frying pan quadrant of the park. The building next to it sheltered us from the north wind.
Allan worked on the quadrant with the pond and waterfall, removing lots of leaves and a few weeds from the L shaped border.
In my own garden I would have left the leaves, as I think they are good for the soil. Parks seem to need to be all tidy.
We quit at around five, chilled and fed up with the wind. At home, I happily examined something exciting that had come in the mail:
Bill Dale, to whom I had emailed a fervent fan letter about his perfectly great song, Luckiest Man Alive, sent me two demo CDs. I am planning to track down the bluegrass, country, or folk DJ from the local public radio and see if I can introduce them to my favourite song. I am still obsessed with it.
I settled down in my comfy chair to read….and yet even though the book was an intensely interesting one, I felt too tired to concentrate. Fortunately, the movie we watched in the later evening was gripping enough to fully keep my attention, although I have one complaint: If the film maker makes a point at the beginning that there is no sound in space, why have schlocky orchestral music playing to increase the suspense? I think that no musical soundtrack would have been much more effective.
I loved the picture of the little pool.
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Thank you, Susan. Long Beach has two nice little ponds with small waterfalls.
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