24 February: waking up Marilyn’s garden

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

On the way to work, the planter at the Ilwaco Post office has narcissi and the buds of Tulip sylvestris

In Ocean Park, we had to fuel up with some coffee at the Kiss of Mist espresso drive through.

Kiss of Mist drive through

Marilyn’s Garden, Surfside

I was curious just how long it takes to get to Marilyn’s, our furthest job from home, so I let Map My Walk map our drive.

14.51 miles, 30 minutes

This is a good time to sadly reveal that the blue line has NOT meant Allan’s walk as compared to mine.  Turns out the blue line is just a “segment” of my walk (or ride) that appears if I run my cursor over a list of segments on the side of the app.  Sorry to have misled you all!

Map My Walk is also a little weird in that it implies I hared around all over the place on this job, into the house, and over into the neighbours’ yards.  I swear that never happened!

Today’s work, with odd digressions

If I can trust the mapping distance, it says I walked 4.08 miles, 9,754 steps, in three and a half hours at Marilyn’s garden.  It certainly felt like that long of a distance is possible with the backing and forthing to put debris in the trailer.

Marilyn’s garden, before, looking south

I was thrilled, upon wading into the garden to clip, to find that the akebia I planted two or more years ago has finally evaded the voracious deer and climbed up an old snag tree.

Akebia

sweetly fragrant flowers

a triumph at last!  I sniffed and gloated.  No, rejoiced sounds better.

The neighbour had wanted us to take down that snag and I kept it as that akebia was struggling to hard to get going on it.

Today, the neighbour wanted us to get rid of the English Laurel that has sprouted up (probably from a seed from a big one in her yard) near the property line.  I said if it was on her side, she was welcome to cut it down, but if it was on Marilyn’s side, I wanted to keep it.  While I am no big fan of English Laurel, I am a huge fan of “blocking the eye” at a garden’s edge unless there is a gorgeous view beyond, and it has been very hard to get anything evergreen other than slow growing evergreen huckleberry to “take” along this line,  what with the deer chomping down the escallonia and other solutions that I have tried.  I said we would keep it clipped, and asked Allan if he would bring it down to the height of the gutters.

Allan approaches the laurel with implements of destruction.

I was weeding by the driveway.  Soon I was crying out “Noooooo!” as he clipped the first of the three sprouts much lower than I had wanted.

He cut this much….

When all I had wanted clipped was THIS much.

So who wins the battle of pruning, the one with the clippers or the one who protests the loudest?  At least the other two uprights were clipped the way I wanted them.

The drama ends with a compromise.  Allan is being careful not to step on narcissi.

As you can see, by then we were done cutting down the ornamental grasses, which all needed clipping.  It was a joy to take down the Solidago ‘Fireworks’ and Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ that just broke off easily at the base with no clipping required.

At the back: This juniper (Moon-something, ‘Blue Moon’ or ‘Moonglow’?) has resisted deer nibbling, as has the little Ilex ‘Sky Pencil’.

‘Wilma Goldcrest’ cypress is also not bothered by deer…

But just since winter, her backside does not look as good as her frontside.

Another successful deer resistant plant is this Ilex, or is it a boxwood? I fear I don’t know how to tell them apart.

Nothing but the big ornamental grasses have been truly successful at making a visual wall at the back of the garden, and of course, they are only tall in summer.  I had thought of leaving the Buddleia (a sterile kind) up…but I just couldn’t.

Buddleia, before

and after

I was delighted to have time to do some weeding and still be out of there in time to make it to the dump.  I had not that we would get done that soon and figured we would have to keep a trailer load of debris overnight and deal with disposal tomorrow.

I had a visitor while doing the final weeding.

Skooter was very taken with the Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’ (catmint).

After his roll in the catmint, Skooter helped me finish weeding.

a lovely hellebore in Marilyn’s garden

little dried figs

You can see the fig tree on the left against the house.

after; the garden could use some mulch…We left some debris, as its breakdown will improve the soil.

Skooter and a large hellebore

the garden, after

with Skooter posing handsomely.

We worked at blazing speed and we were done in time for a trip to the dump, a 14 mile, 42 minute drive.

I have thought of making a debris pile at the south end of Marilyn’s garden, just where the garden slopes down.  That is always BEFORE I realize again just how much debris the spring clean up creates. The dump scale showed we offloaded 240 pounds of debris.

in to the Peninsula Sanitation dump…

a full load, plus some buckets of weeds in the van

the offloaded pile

and out again; did I do the math right?

We had time to do one more job at the end of the day.

Long Beach: Sid Snyder Way beach approach

We had some planters to clean up along this road to the beach.  The first one was so bothersome to me that I thought “I am gonna have to dig this one out…next time”) and then found myself walking back to the van (which was parked by planter number two, on which Allan was working) to get the pick.

before, all a mess with plain green annoying creeping Jenny and weeds

after, because I just could not stand that corner any more. Allan came later and swept it.

While I worked on more planters, Allan checked on the kite museum garden.

the kite museum’s little entry garden, before

full of deer hoof prints!

tidied up by Allan

Sid Snyder, looking west, as I continued to do planters

I’m happy to see the narcissi are not getting picked this year.

although they are getting nibbled by snails.

Annoyed at planter being used as an ashtray!

I have friends who smoke who will pinch their cigarette butts out and carry them away in their pockets rather than litter like this.

The next planter has a chronic problem of sinking soil, and I do not know why.

The very last planter is still done by volunteers…the only one that’s true of…I was not going to clean it up but I simply had to.

Now it’s ready for new plants, after removing all the dead annuals (and weeds).

By now, Allan had joined me and he took care of the second to last planter.

And there is the ocean, viewed just before we drove home to an evening of blogging.

left: I got to cross two jobs of the work list tonight! right: The March schedule is already filling up.

At home, I had the best news of the past week.  Bob Nold, of the Miserable Gardener blog (one of my two most favourite blogs), has a new puppy.  You can meet Mani the puppy right here.

Next:  a slide show post of Marilyn’s garden in 2014.