Wednesday, 15 April 2015
Some garden admiration while loading the trailer for work:
Port of Ilwaco
After a quick check on Spruce Street to see if the two street planters have been shifted to their new positions (they haven’t), we started weeding and fertilizing at the east end of Howerton Way and worked our way west. One day was not enough time to do a perfect job. We got the biggest weeds and a lot of small ones and left a few more hidden areas unweeded for lack of time. It would have been a great day to “Map my Walk”….if I had remembered.
While we were weeding that long bed, Mayor Mike stopped by, and over the course of the conversation I agreed to take on the community building garden. What? We are supposed to be cutting back. My affection for Ilwaco won over good sense. I have always said I would not do that garden with its bindweed, horsetail, and (in my often disagreed-with opinion) too much heather planted on level ground. I am fussy about heather and only appreciate it on a slope. Also, there is salal which I cannot abide in a garden. (A fellow CPN later said to me, “Salal gets mowed.” So we’ll see if I can live with weeding around heather and salal. We have two fewer private gardens in Ilwaco this year, and I said to Allan that the amount of work time will probably come out about the same as last year by adding the community garden.
At least I had the sense to tell Mike that we would not be able to get to it for a couple of weeks. Lawdy, we don’t even have the Long Beach beach approach garden weeded yet and that usually takes us 6-7 days.
At the Ilwaco Pavilion garden bed, I had the urge to do some alteration. Out came two clumps of Pacific Reed Grass and in went a Hebe ‘Boughton Dome’ and a couple of golden variegated lemon thyme and some seeds of ‘Twister’ California poppy.
I added one Agastache ‘Cotton Candy’ to the garden on the south side of the Port Office.
As we went along all these gardens today, I fertilized selected plants rather than casting the fertilizer all over the beds. I fear the latter approach would get loose dogs to digging. I’m worried already that dogs will get into the port office bed and break off my precious alliums.
If dogs were drawn in by fertilizer smells, at least it would be unintentional damage unlike human finger blight; I also fear people finding the alliums irresistable to pluck, not realizing that each bulb is expensive and only produces one flower per year.
We did a thorough weeding of the beds on the north side of the port office and Don Nisbett Art Gallery, despite a little argy- bargy about whether we were going too slow (so quoth Allan) and me wanting to achieve something like perfection because the Saturday Market will be open with people walking past the gardens.
The bed above is proof that even though narcissi perennialize, they sometimes have to be replenished. They have petered out completely here so we must plant more next fall.
As we weeded those beds, a fellow engaged us in conversation and gave us his attractive business card. He will have a booth at the Ilwaco Saturday Market this summer, selling varieties of cherry tomatoes and (I think) some sort of condiments or sauces. His items sounded delicious.
By the time we reached the next bed, adjacent to Time Enough Books, I was having to sacrifice perfection for speed. If we did not get the boatyard done today as well, we would not have time to do our north end jobs this week. We got most of the weeds and I hoped that the river rock and many beach strawberries would disguise the little grasses that we left behind.
While we were weeding somewhere along this stretch, someone from a passing car yelled out “We love you!” or maybe “I love you!” By the time I uncricked my neck and looked up, the vehicle was two blocks away. If indeed the words were directed at us, it was much nicer than being honked at. The honking, while usually from friends, is jarring and startling when one is working along a busy street, especially in Long Beach.
I deadheaded the tulips in the Time Enough Books garden boat; they are yellow to catch the eye of passersby.
By the time we got to the two westernmost garden beds, I had despaired of getting to the boatyard at all, and while weeding I brooded about which jobs we would have to skip in order to get Ilwaco and Long Beach completely groomed for the clam festival on Saturday. As one might expect when one is running out of time, the last two beds proved to be exceptionally weedy. We had filled almost every bucket with weeds, so Allan drove off to the east end of the port to dump the debris.
At this grim hour, as I kept slogging along on that exceptionally weedy westernmost garden bed, who should track us down by Todd Wiegardt, newly moved back to the Long Beach Peninsula. (You may recall that he has been mailing us cool plants since last summer.) As we talked, he couldn’t resist weeding. With his expert help (he used to be the curator of the display garden for the famous Plant Delights Nursery in North Carolina), we got the last Howerton Way gardens done well enough to move on to the boatyard. Just have a look at this photo album of the Juniper Level Botanic Garden of which he was curator and you will see why I had no worries that he might pull out a good plant.
Todd’s weeding technique impressed me in that he has speed and the knack of removing the weeds without disturbing the soil very much. (Turning the soil over encourages more weed seeds to germinate.)
On to the boatyard! All the nasty big horsetail had started to poke out of the soil. With less than two hours till sunset, we just tried to get most of it broken off (said to be more effective than pulling it) and the larger weeds and bindweed pulled. The littler weeds will mostly have to wait till the week before the May 2 children’s parade.
I had planted Narcissus ‘Baby Moon’ all along the edge thinking how cute it would be all in flower for the parade. Of course, as regular readers have heard me saying for weeks now, it is blooming WAY EARLY. I doubt it will last till May 2nd.
I finally had to call uncle as it looked like Todd could keep going; I had hit the wall.
Thanks to Todd, we got the three block long boatyard done well enough to call it good for the early Saturday Market opening. (The Market’s official opening day is May 2nd; this week is a sneak preview in association with the Long Beach Razor Clam Festival.)
A friend in need is a friend indeed. The Ceanothus looks really good.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Mr. T.
LikeLike
Have followed your blog for a couple months and always enjoy it….especially when you name the plants I am not familiar with. Thank you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks! It tends to be rather the same every year so we appreciate every reader!
LikeLike
I’m in complete agreeance with Mr Tootlepeddle on the blue Ceanothus. Just spectacular. How lovely of your friend to come give you a hand 😄.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How fortunate to have help…so rare these days for someone to just pitch in ! I love the Ceanothus…I was greatly saddened to lose all my big ones in the big freeze winter of 2013-14.
LikeLike
It is rare indeed.
LikeLike