Saturday, 21 February 2015
As I left four work, the cat family of mother and two brothers was hanging out by the south window.
Ilwaco planters
The Ilwaco boatyard garden was today’s target. Allan got started on it straightaway. I digressed to one block of planters and street trees that had not had their first check up of the year yet. The planters looked good with narcissi blooming, and some chickweed and little grasses needing to be pulled.
The Portside Café recently acquired new new owners. One of our neighbours was leaving there with two family members while I weeded under a street tree. and told me that the food was so wonderful that she gave the chef himself an extra tip. I’ve always loved the exterior; now I need to find time to give the food a try.
Closer to the boatyard, at First and Eagle, passing deer have nipped the tulips in the planter. There are certain deer crossroads, like one intersection in Long Beach, where they eat more than they do elsewhere in town.
I won’t be planting tulips in those planters next fall.
At the corner of First and Eagle, I’ve been watching one street tree slowly lean. There is nowhere to stake it, as it is in a small square surrounded by concrete (and is too big to stake anyway).
Allan pointed out that it is solidly in position and does not budge at all when pushed.
In the course of the one block of planters, I picked up this much trash in the grass next to the sidewalks:
Does this mean no other walkers pick up trash on their journeys? (My noble plan to do trash walks this past winter was thwarted by my overwhelming desire to just stay home.)
Finally, after an hour and a half, I was done with the six trees and eight planters that had been on my agenda and joined Allan at the boatyard garden. As I got down to work, the Life Flight helicopter flew over the oil tanks kitty corner from the boatyard and I wished the best to whoever was having a scary awful day.
Meanwhile, I was fortunate enough to be having a pleasant day at work next to a boatyard full of interesting sights. A radio played country music, which I at least find preferable to classic rock.
Steve, who lives on a sailboat in the marina came by with his dog Aleutia (a certified search and rescue dog).
Allan had already made some progress.
I came along behind, clipping santolinas and Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’:
See that stem of Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’ on the ground toward the bottom of the photo? If I clipped it short and stuck it in the ground, it would probably root and make a nice new plant. Same with the clippings from the Santolina. I get overwhelmed with armloads of clippings and don’t have time to make a santolina cutting nursery. I have started a lot of them right in the ground, though, over time.
We’d noticed earlier, on drive-bys, that the center (slightly wider) section of the garden had a smashed down rosemary and flattened Stipa gigantea. I tried to imagine what had caused it. I forgot to take an after photo, although this one, looking back, shows it looking tidier:
By now, it was 3 PM and I was concerned that we would not get to the end of the boatyard before dark.
I had many, many more santolinas to clip. I lost count. I have two different kinds of silver ones, and green ones, and “Lemon Fizz’, the gold one that loves to revert to green.
By now, Allan had already made one trip to dump a full cart of debris. I had removed, with a pick, some goldenrod that someone had planted during the dark years when the garden was not mine. (The other thing that got planted then was a long row of pampas grass, which soon blocked half the sidewalk! It got removed, by backhoe, when I got the garden back.) I’d left the goldenrod for years and it had stayed somewhat well behaved; now it is running and had to go. The goldenrod roots I bagged up to throw in the trash, because I don’t want it to get started elsewhere. (I still use Solidago ‘Fireworks’ because it stays in a polite and well-behaved clump.)
Brief history of the boatyard garden: I started it as a volunteer in 1997 when I had a shady garden behind the boatyard; I wanted to improve the town and also to have a place for sunloving plants. In 2003, a new electrical line was laid, which required the digging up of the whole garden. I had many gardening jobs by then and the garden had become a burden to me, so I did not mind letting it go. Also, there was a scary man who had a boat in the yard at that time. He was known to be…disturbed…and he would mutter, from behind the fence, the most horrible things to me like “They knew what to do with people like you in Nazi Germany.” It made me not want to go there to work on the garden. (The demented fellow is gone now…thank goodness.) In 2011, the port hired me to bring it back the garden back thing of beauty, and here we are.
I am sure the weeding was less thorough as we rushed to get to the end before dark. Allan made another run to the debris field while I did the last of the weeding.
Unfortunately, big old horsetail lurks under the garden and will start popping up soon and then we will have to deal with that.
As we finished up, boats were coming in and out of the harbour.
I used Map My Walk again today and the app says I walked 3.83 miles on this job. The visible route, as usual, does not quite line up with reality, as all of it took place outside the boatyard fence:
See the trees in the lower left, above? That’s where our old house is, the original Tangly Cottage Garden.
Around the curve of the road, where it turns into Howerton, just past the lower right corner, we have a curbside garden yet to weed.
At home, even though dusk was softening up the outlines, I took a photo of our pink tree to show its form. Tomorrow, we are said to be due for 40 mph east wind and we may lose some blossoms.
I thought I was going to get the deep satisfaction of erasing Ilwaco from the February work list…till I remembered there are still two planters unchecked over on Spruce Street. Drat! And the Port of Ilwaco remains on the list till we get the last two garden sections cleaned up along Howerton Way.
I am glad to see that you are not wasting your days away. I continue to be impressed by how far you walk.
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