Saturday, 21 March 2015
It was Montana Mary’s 60th birthday, four days after mine. When I turned 50, she sent me a card in which she wrote something like”When we were younger, it was very important that you were four days older than me, but now it’s important that I’m five days younger than you.”
at home
First, I took a quick look around the front garden to see what had come into bloom.
Peninsula Quilt Guild Show
Our workday began with glorious weather and a visit to the annual quilt show at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum. Here are just a few of the more gardeny quilts:
You can see more photos of the quilts on my Ilwaco blog, here. I should have rousted out to see it during the previous day’s rainy weather. Had not been able to tear myself away from processing photos of my trip.
On our way out of town, we saw a change at the stoplight corner. We’d have to get a proper photo later as we were in a rush to get working.
Long Beach
After the quilt show, we finally headed to Long Beach to deadhead narcissi in the planters and street tree gardens and parks. I suppose there had been some dead flowers during the week. I had not even thought about work during my time at the hotel (which means I had not figured out any solution to our overwork problem). I’d decided that it was not going to ruin anyone’s beach vacation to see some weeds or dead flowers. If the vacationer was not a gardener, they would not notice. If they were a gardener, they could feel sympathetic and/or happy with themselves for being a superior gardener.
Allan and I split up and I walked the southern blocks while Allan did the northern. My head was still not in work mode after seven glorious days off. Before my trip, I had been in high spring clean up gear and all systems were go, go, go. I needed to rev myself back up somehow. Some things in Long Beach would have to wait because we needed to do another job today, as well.
Andersen’s RV Park
After our quick one hour walk around in Long Beach, we went to Andersen’s on the mission of planting sweet peas along the picket fence. I sorted a few out from each of the many colours that I have this year.
The sweet pea names: Princess El1zabeth, Beaujolais, Blue Streamers, Beaujalais, Painted Lady, Saltwater Taffy Swirls, Chocolate Streamers, Velvet Elegance, Black Knight, Janet Scott, Watermelon, Countess Cadogan, Lipstick, Lord Nelson, Old Spice Mix, Zinfandel, Miss Willmott, Flora Norton, Jewels of Albion, Queen of Hearts, Pastel Sunset, America, Early Multiflora Blend, Chiffon Elegance, Blue Reflection Mix, High Scent Mix.
Last year, I had bad results with sweet peas. This year, we did an extensive clearing of all other plants along the picket fence, added dairy manure, and applied liberal amounts of sluggo after planting, plus I have enough seeds to do a full replanting if necessary.
Allan cleaned up an area to the north of the house so I could plant sweet peas around a bamboo teepee.
I had a revelation while looking past Payson Hall at the six whiskey barrels on the lawn. I feel so stupid! I could not figure out why the narcissi had not come up this spring. I suddenly remembered our big job last May, digging out all the narcissi and replanting them into the garden, as they had become overcrowded and I wanted the planting of annuals to be easier. I meant to plant NEW narcissi in the fall and not only did I FORGET but I also forgot WHY I had no flowers this spring. (The ones in the garden look great, though!) I hope this is not a sign of increasing addlement.
Ilwaco
On the way out of town this morning we had noticed that the murals were up, as promised, at the old Oddfellows building on the corner. It has recently been purchased and is being fixed up. We would have participated but the main part of the project happened while I was gone. I had made a picture of the volunteer group’s publicity release and an old photo I had.
Tackle renovation of this very old building is an impressive project..
Next: rain was predicted for Sunday and I still had not managed to kick myself back into mental gear for catching up at work. At least it felt great to cross Andersen’s off of the sweet pea planting list.
Wow–those quilts! Thanks for the Ilwaco link. So sorry to have missed the show.
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It is excellent every year. Sorry you missed it, too. Glad to have provided a peek. Next year in Ilwaco!
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What a splendid set of quilts.
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