Sunday, 1 March 2015
Despite having a first-cleanup-of-the-year list that has spilled over into March, we took a day off, because we needed one, and because life is short. Ed Strange stopped by mid morning, as he often does on a Sunday on his way to his garden maintenance job for the Shorebank building at the Port, two blocks from our house. Because he is a morning person, he had already been to Seven Dees nursery all the way down in Seaside.
While we were visiting, he got a phone call to tell him that his puppy had been born. He put in on speakerphone so Allan and I could both here the description of the 2 day old littermates. The breeder talked baby talk to the pups. We so look forward to the puppy arriving later this spring.
I showed off my Rustia, in prolific bloom. It’s to the left in the photo above. This is the plant that, when Ciscoe Morris visited my garden, caused him to say “Ooh la la! You don’t just have ordinary plants!”
We walked around the garden, and Ed laughed and said “I see you have your favourite plant in a garbage can; how appropriate.” (He knows I’ve eliminated many phormiums over the last few years.)
Actually, that’s an idea I got from a restaurant garden near Heronswood Nursery, on a tour day several years back.
Ed and I had a good long chat about work related topics. We are both trying to reduce our schedules to allow more time for leisure. I showed him our new tin garden sign and he wanted one, too. When he departed for the Basket Case Greenhouse on a sign quest, I settled on my project for the day: cutting back hardy fuchsias in the back garden. The air was chilly enough that I was not entirely happy to be outdoors at all, despite the sunshine, and the soil felt too cold to make weeding enjoyable.
Allan helped with three different projects (AND mowed the lawn).
First, he fixed my best plant table that I got from a “free” pile of stuff over on Spruce Street.
It was a mistake (mine!) to use asphalt roofing as the underlayment. It should have been a piece of plywood with holes drilled in it. I can see now that it will slowly need more fixing and replacement as the shingles sag.
Allan also removed the hardy fuchsia whose base was infested with horrid orange montbretia. It is one of several of the same kind of hardy fuchsia magellanica so I did not lose anything special.
I did decide to cut the big fuchsia that had new growth up high all the way to the ground. I like walking through a forest of fuchsias, so I don’t know what possessed me except that the up high growth was thin, and the basal growth looked so thick and healthy.
I used to love the fuchsia walk at my old house, over behind the boatyard, in a garden so sheltered that the fuchsia magellanica turned into trees that were taller than me.
In our new(ish) garden, a lot of winter wind is probably what causes the die back and lack of tree-like height.
I was trying out my new Olympus camera today and perhaps it was the overcast day that led to a lack of detail. Hmmm.
I do love my blue Rozanne river in summer, and yet reading The Miserable Gardener blog by Bob Nold, the author of High and Dry, has made me cast about for more areas to put a scree garden. I now have a small one by the garden boat, and yet…would not this center bed make an incredible scree garden? I just don’t think I can give up my Rozanne effect though….even though it makes the garden all soft and fuzzy and not a home for special little things. I loved his suggestion of using buried rubble of all sorts to build up the spine of a garden bed.
Maybe I can find room somewhere else in the garden….or next door in Nora’s yard, where her granddaughter said I could plant anything I wanted. That would be a surprise! I am grateful to her for letting us use her grandma’s parking pad for loading and unloading the trailer.
Oh, and I put up some fence slats that I got from the Long Beach city works debris pile. (I did ask!) They are just tied on the the fence behind which, later, will be a tarped pile of crab pots by the neighbours’ gear shed. Now that they are in place, maybe Allan can help to affix them better. He’s clever like that.
The third project that Allan helped with today was putting up the new garden sign that we got at the Basket Case yesterday. Ed had gone straight from our house to the Basket Case, gotten one of his own, and texted me a photo of it already up! The pressure was on. Allan still had to coat ours with a rust proof product and let it dry.
I had suggested that ours go on the arbour on the front of the house. Allan thought that would be too show-offy, so we compromised on the west side arbour, which still shows from the street.
I am now on a casual quest for something not quite as gaudy to decorate the top of the front arbour.
I love your new garden sign, it’s so colorful! What would we do without our helpful husbands? Thanks for the reminder to look up Bob’s book.
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The sign would be a lot lower down without Allan! 😉
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Great sign. Now people will have to stop confusing your garden with a harbour.
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That’s the idea, Mr. T, in case they can’t quite figure it out. 😉
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I could do with Allan and his pick axe right about now to help dig up a sour mulberry that is in the wrong spot.
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If only you weren’t so far away, we’d pop right over!
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Agreed!
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Great sign…looks like my new place will be perfect for a scree garden as I now have over 50 tons of rock sitting at the end of the building pad–no need for computers or tires or such….
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Read High and Dry by Bob Nold for cool plants for a well drained pile of rocks.
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