doubling up on some entries so we can get back to garden tours!
Monday, 13 July 2015
Every day but Sunday: a stop at the post office because we don’t get home mail delivery.
our volunteer garden and its monster leaning lily
Basket Case Greenhouse
The Basket Case closed for the season on Sunday. We stopped by to get some sale perennials, mainly to help out by leaving them fewer plants to water.
Allan’s photo: Shadow, as usual, was in love with our van (which used to be “his”).
Allan’s photo
Long Beach
Watering the Long Beach street trees and planters was the first order of the day.
Wooden Horse gift shop: that star was $125. We might be in the wrong business.
The Hungry Harbor with Basket Case hanging basket
white nigella (love in a mist) in Fifth Street Park
my audience while doing a bit of weeding in Fifth Street Park
Eryngium ‘Jade Frost’ in Fifth Street Park (with sanguisorba and Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and Nicotiana langsdorfii)
While watering the planter outside the Herb ‘N Legend Smoke Shop, I saw my good friend Bill Clearman working on the entryway.
Our Bill, mixing some goop.
in a planter: Geranium ‘Rozanne’ with bee
Coreopsis ‘Star Cluster’
The city crew was out working hard, too.
I’m pleased with this planter, that was all white yarrow last year. (The yarrow had been planted by a volunteer and was hard to get rid of.)
white tigridia
white catananche (Cupid’s dart) under a street tree
I like this catananche a lot.
Lilies on the east side of Fifth Street Park
Gunnera in Fifth Street Park (SE quadrant)
yellow tigridia (Mexican shell flower)
Veterans Field…I must find time to deadhead that Salvia ‘May Night’ soon
Veterans Field with Gaura ‘So White’
Catananche caerulea in Veterans Field
Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’ in Veterans Field
Ilwaco
With Long Beach done, Allan watered the Ilwaco planters and street trees while I watered and weeded at the boatyard garden. While we were at our house getting the battery for the water trailer, Ed Strange pulled up behind us with my nephew, Jackson.
Allan’s photo
Allan’s photo
Allan’s photo
I long to pull all the poppies…but am letting them go to seed.
Allan’s photo
Allan’s photo
Allan’s photo: A bee snoozing under a daisy petal
Allan’s photo: The darn deer are nibbling the nasturtiums in some of the Ilwaco planters.
Allan’s photos: Don and Jenna were painting at Queen La De Da’s
Allan’s photo: the planter by the fire station
While I chose the plants, Allan is taking care of the Ilwaco planters pretty much all by himself this year and is doing an excellent job of watering and grooming them.
Tuesday, 14 July 2015
I had to get up at 8 AM to go across the river with Garden Tour Nancy for the Diggin’ In the Dirt radio show to promote the upcoming Music in the Gardens Tour. Morning people will laugh, but that is awfully hard for me. Allan went back to sleep and woke up at 9:30 to listen to the show.
We’d left extra time for stopping for work being done on the Astoria Megler bridge.
workers way up on the tippy top!!!
KMUN community radio in Astoria
the view over buildings to the Columbia River
My job was to describe the tour gardens, and Nancy’s was to talk about the music and other tour particulars. I think it went well. Pam Fleming, our friend and the city gardener for Seaside, Oregon, joined us to promote her tour of the Seaside city gardens, which will take place on July 26th.
After the show, we went to breakfast at the Blue Scorcher. Getting to have breakfast with Pam, whom we do not see often enough, was one of my big motivations for getting up so early.
on the way: poppies
a courtyard
Pam and Nancy outside the Blue Scorcher
Blue Scorcher planter
at the door of the Blue Scorcher
I bypassed delicious treats…
…in favour of a breakfast burrito, and Pam got the quiche.
Blue Scorcher dining
at our table
breakfast burrito
delicious quiche, made sweet by cabbage (we traded bites)
From this delightful (although sleepy) morning, I went home and then to the horror of weeding…
The Long Beach beach approach garden
before…our goal was to get two sections done (out of 13)
before
Allan’s photo
It is such a tough job in this drought. The weeds are stuck in so firmly. The best parts of the afternoon: When a passerby reminisced about her grandma making rose hip jelly, and how it smelled of roses. And when the dial a ride bus stopped next to us and the doors opened and I said “Have you come to take us away?” and the driver said “The best thing Long Beach ever did for its gardens in town and out here was to hire you two!” And when a woman asked “Are they edible?” when she was already nibbling on a rose hip. (Good thing they are). And when our neighbour Jared walked by with my good dog friend, Rudder.
Allan’s photo: Rudder! (the big black dog, the other one is Yarrow)
This is about as good as we are getting it done.
Allan’s photo: what we are up against
Allan’s photo
after
after
Allan’s photo: I resorted to desperate measures.
the parts where I just got fed up and used the strimmer.
Ilwaco
On the way home, we drove by the port to see if any plants needed watering. What did I spy but a fingerblighter, a woman in person, caught in the act, picking herself a bouquet of Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’!
Allan’s photo: caught in the act
She was caught red handed as we pulled our van up next to her, and she had the grace to look mortified when I told her to stop. She said she was sorry. She said that the Eryngium was “just so unusual.” Allan said it was an expensive plant. I said it only blooms once, and that we work hard on the gardens and she was lessening them. She asked if there was some way we could replant the flower. (!!!) I said no there was not. She said “I blame my grandmother because she always picked flowers and I got it from her.” I could not think fast enough to say that MY grandmother taught me to NOT pick flowers from anyone’s garden, public or private. As she bicycled away, I felt sorry for her and called “It was your bad luck that we happened to be driving by.”
or, rather, to protect the guilty (Allan’s photo)
a soul-soothing view
watering at Time Enough Books
Oh, how I love Blue Scorcher! Shame on the flower-stealer.
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Wish Blue Scorcher had a café at the port!
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So what became of the bouquet? I hope she at least gave it back to you. She is lucky you photographed her and not someone else who would have plastered her face all over the net. However, hopefully the grace you gave her will help her understand and learn from the experience.
Weeding the beach approach, Aye yi yi, I feel for you, but have to agree with what a good thing it is that you two are doing the work.
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She rode away on her bike still clutching the bouquet. I have been known to take bouquets away from people in Long Beach and take the flowers to put in a vase at city hall…once when I caught someone with an armload of tulips and once when I caught someone with a sheaf of lilies. I just took the flowers, said these are city property. That was when I was less jaded, less used to finger blight. I do think if she had picked ALL the eryngium stalks I might have taken them away and given them to Salt Hotel to put in a vase. (The Port Office would be a good destination, too, but they were closed by then.)
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The tigridia is fun. I am sorry about the eryngium theft as they are such lovely plants to look at.
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Thanks, Mr. T!
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I think you should keep a squirt bottle of water in the car so you can squirt finger blighters ! Love that lovely red plant in the planter near the Blue Scorcher cafe.
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The squirt bottle idea sounds like fun!
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Have you considered planting the Eryngiums that reseed? That way you’ll have lots more to “share”.
I don’t know how I’d put up with the human pruning/de-planting. I get mad enough at the raccoons that unplant my stuff…
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I very much want Eryngium giganteum. Miss Wilmot’s Ghost and one called Silver Ghost. Might have to order the seeds as I never see the plants for sale, just see them in your gardens when I go to Portland.
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At least your Eryngium blooms! More than I can say for mine this year! ha ha!! The Tigridia is fun. Every year when you show pictures of them I think ” I want some of those”! and then of course…. I forget!!
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I do have some eryngiums that have not bloomed this year. Wish I knew why that happens.
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Hallelujah and what a surprise, my eryngium is about to bloom! It shot up while I was on vacation!!! The one that is about to bloom is an off-shoot of the original plant, so I am guessing I need to divide the rest! Can’t wait to see it bloom against my Spirea ‘White Gold’
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Cool, I didn’t know they could start to bloom this late in summer.
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