17 August: from agitation to relief

Monday, 17 August 2015

by our driveway: Nicotiana ‘Hot Chocolate’

Long Beach

Today was the watering of the Long Beach planters and street trees, which went well.

Silver-edged Sanguisorba ‘Dali Marble’ looks good in Fifth Street Park in a spot with lots of water.

a sweet little bird on Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ in Fifth Street Park

Tigridia in a planter

Tigridia and Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and painted sage

Allan’s photo of a planter in the north blocks

It was the first day of the annual kite festival; Allan got this photo looking west while watering Fish Alley.

Allan had commented last watering day, when he did the south end planters, that all the trailing nasturtiums had been cut back from the planter at 7th Street.  Yes, they have!

They were all down to the street.  Who did this?

This is an odd whodunit, because parks manager Mike likes things that trail.  I am mystified.  It was too tidily done to be deer.  Hrmph.

Gaura lindhiemeri ‘Whirling Butterflies’ on the east side of Fifth Street Park.

Salvia viridis (painted sage) is just about to the point of needing lots of deadheading.

The white painted sage starts to brown off first; if clipped, it will have smaller blooms lower down.

The colour is from bracts, not flowers.

Salvia viridis bracts

The flowers are just these little white ones.

The Long Beach carousel; I enjoy the carousel music.

carousel mirror

Round about this time, Allan and I crossed paths on our watering rounds.  (On Mondays, he does the 18 street trees, Fish Alley barrels, and the eight northernmost planters.)  We decided to try out the Kebab House.  We’d been eagerly waiting for it to open.

Kebab House behind Lewis and Clark Square

starter menu (more items to come, we hear)

ordering

the view from our table

chicken kebab with saffron rice and cucumber sauce

Allan’s sandwich on a tortilla. (Pita bread is hard to find in these parts!)

It was all delicious and we will be eating there again soon.

Back to watering: I found one of the brand new statice plants pulled out and left to die in the big Lewis and Clark Square planter.  THIS time, I found it in time to replant it before it wilted and died.

Yanked out but SAVED just in the nick of time.

Allan’s photo: cute dog downtown

Allan’s photo, with street tree garden

When I reached the stoplight and looked west to enjoy the view of the first day of kite festival is when I got agitated, because a booth close to the arch was flying a large confederate flag that I could see from three block away, a hateful symbol that would be in any photo taken looking west through the Long Beach arch.  I was incensed and walked right to city hall (a block away) to ask if something could be done to move it away from the arch.  I ended up just leaving a message for someone high up and went on my watering round, steaming.

My objection was to the flag flying where it would be right in tourists’ faces and in photos of the arch from certain angles, some of which would perhaps get onto the internet with the Long Beach arch and a confed flag in the same photo.  When people fly that flag on their homes, I assume they are history-ignorant at best and deliberately racist at worst, and walk on. If it had been flying on a booth in the middle of the concourse but not in full upfront view, I would have been sickened but walked on. The issue here, just as when a hotel was flying it downtown, was that in such a visible spot, it could be hurtful and hateful to visitors and residents, and gives the wrong impression of our town.

Watering again, I was soothed by this charming little band that was playing by a street tree.  Jeez Louise by name, they were excellent.  One musician played a saw; I wished I’d worked harder to get a photo showing that.  I do love a good saw tune.  I gave them a dollar, so I could have taken more photos.

Jeez Louise

from behind one of the Long Beach chopsticks

I guess I had better explain the chopsticks:

screenshot from Roadside America

I needed to go out to the last booth on the Bolstad beach approach to get a kite festival t-shirt for Carol, my traditional yearly gift for her birthday.  But I did not want to walk past that sickening confederate flag, so Allan and I walked out the fire road.  I was hot, it was sandy, I was agitated, my knee hurt, I was dizzy, etc etc.

Looking west:  a long haul on a sandy fire lane

Allan’s photo: grumpy old me on the fire road

Allan’s photo

I got the t shirt and decided (mostly because of being hot and mildy dizzy) that we could walk back by the paved road (the one by which our garden runs).

Allan’s photo, heading back

Allan’s photo

Allan’s photo

I thought I could avert my eyes as long as I did not have to see the darn flag as a backdrop to the arch, but wouldn’t you know, my feets took me right over to the booth to complain to the boothies. I just could not help it.  (I did not realize that Allan was documenting my journey; it tickles my funnybone that he did.)

Allan’s photo: me trying to explain why I did not want the flag placed so visibly

I told them (almost in tears once I began) that I did not want their controversial (to some; I feel no controversy about loathing it) flag flying in photos of the arch and kites this week.  They said “It should never have been taken down in the south”.  I gave up on that conversation.

I went back to city hall, complained some more, to receptive ears as we are a “blue” (liberal) area of the county.  My issue was that it was so visible and front and center in views of the arch and from the adjacent hotel.  (By the way, we were off the work clock for all this agitation time.)

Allan’s photo: me being grumpy at city hall

The city could do nothing, so my next kvetching stop was the kite museum at the other end of town, where I left a note for the director after having a sympathetic ear from the shop clerk.  Meanwhile, two friends had also gone down to complain to the boothies, to similar no avail.  One did feel she had given them something to think about when she told them she was going to send the Seahawks football team photos of their Seahawks flags flying on the same pole as the confederate flag.

I took no photos of the flag showing its prominent position because I did not want to post any such photo anywhere where it could be passed around and made to look like the flag had any association with my beloved Long beach town.  A friend went down and took a selfie of herself wearing one of the same booth’s “God is Not Dead” baseball caps with a backdrop of their confed flag and the Seahawks flag.  It was rich in irony.   Someone else proposed the good idea that a whole bunch of other banners could be somehow mounted to be between the confed flag and the iconic Long Beach arch.

We then had to go water in Ilwaco.  While I watered the boatyard (and Allan watered the planters), the tune from The Wizard of Oz ran through my head with these words about how I felt when I first saw that flag flying today: My brain began to twitch, my nerves unhitched, and I went right to city hall and bitched bitched bitched.

The happy ending is that when I got home, I learned that the high-ups in the kite festival had got those boothies to take the flag down for the rest of the week.  I felt so relieved.

Ilwaco

Oh, and I did take some photos while I did a weed check up on the planters and watered the boatyard.

planter on Spruce Street

volunteer daises in a planter

The Col-Pacific Motel’s own planters

The Portside Café’s baskets and sunflowers

Portside Café

at the boatyard garden: Someone had pulled out a large catananche (cupid’s dart). Dang blang it.

The hoses at the boatyard were not in convenient places today, involving much dragging and screwing and unscrewing onto faucets.  Oh well.  I just thought about how much harder work would be if I were crab fishing on the Bering Sea instead.

sweet pea ‘Black Knight’ on the boatyard fence

a big new boat

It was a mighty relief to get home to good news about the flag situation.  That will make tomorrow a much better day.

It’s also a good day when Allan makes peach cobbler from Saturday Market peaches.