Saturday, 27 February 2016
Ilwaco
Fortunately, we were awake and having breakfast when Todd arrived in the late morning to bring some plants from his recent plant acquisition trip to T&L Nursery. He said that the weather while I was sleeping had been misty and not work-conducive.
With the new plants in the ladies in waiting area, Allan and I headed for Long Beach with a stop on the way to pick up DVDs from the library. I took the opportunity to review the Ilwaco community building garden.
The heather flowers are already starting to brown off. Oh, how I wish this garden were not so heavy with heather.
I suggested to Allan that, because the kinnikinnick looks so terrible, all of it should be sheared back hard.
I think large sections of the bearberry need to be rogued out and replaced with something more interesting and with less tendency toward shabbiness. At the moment, areas of this garden need weeding but the time is not there to do it.
We got a wonderful haul of movie fare from the library: Party Girl (one of my all time favourite films that Allan has never seen), Jurassic World, Train Wreck and Interstellar…but we must finish watching the delightful latest season of Girls on DVD first.
Long Beach
We returned to the first section of the beach approach garden to finish cutting back the rugosa roses and weeding.
Each section takes about five hours for the two of us to weed (above was a half section) and so the whole first weeding job of the year takes about 130 hours! It is difficult to find that amount of time to carve out of the rest of our schedule.
I tell myself only three more years, including this one, till Allan has turned 66 and we may then insist they find someone else to do this part of the Long Beach job. And yet, there is something terribly satisfying about it. I hope that this year it will seem less deadly, since we have (by choice) several fewer other jobs than last year.
Last year, we didn’t even get started on weeding these garden beds till June; this year, I hope to get the first weeding done in time to plant poppy seeds in the areas won back from weeds and roses. Some seeds did go in at the end of the garden above.
Of course, it would be lovely to mulch the whole long sandy garden. I just don’t want to add that many hours of labour.
With the first section done, we drove out to the “end cap” by the driveway to the big public parking lot.
All too many rose roots are still in there—too many to put poppies in that area. We did manage to peel some roses away from the edge. I often yearn for the past when all this garden had a collection of pretty perennials and poppies. Unfortunately, the kite festival crowds trampled it year after year and the roses have been allowed to take over because they can hold their own against humans.
I’m eager to get back out there to weed another section. Tomorrow calls for 40 mph winds which will definitely be not conducive to work. And I made a problem for us by buying lilies and violas, as we must now return to three gardens to plant them, gardens we could otherwise ignore for a couple of post-spring-cleanup weeks. Ooops.
On the way to the city works debris pile, I snapped a photo of the Culbertson Field flower garden:
…only to realize that old flowers of Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ were obscuring the view.
Above is another plant on my loathed plants list: Lithodora. It has been there for years. I will clip in back hard after it blooms to avoid the dead-inside look that it gets. Like heather, it has such a short bloom time followed by a long tatty looking time unless clipped.
As we drove to the city works yard four blocks south, a woman tried to flag us down with a “YooHoo!” We simply had to keep driving in order to get the debris dumped while we still had daylight. Perhaps she wished to hire gardeners, in which case we would suggest our friends at Sea Star Gardening.
I remembered to sit a couple of times during the day to force myself to bend my right knee. I think some of my problem is from working with a straight leg all day until it locks open, causing much pain trying to get into the van at end of day. Today was better.
At dusk, we gave in to the impulse to dine at the Kabob Cottage. Restaurateur Behnoosh and landlord Doug were just completing the patio. You may recall that earlier today, Doug had driven by us on our beach approach project and said he was “weeding” another area. Below: His version of weeding is to fill in an ugly weedy patch of sorrel and horsetail with matching pavers.
Ginger’s Garden Diaries
from my mother’s garden diaries of two decades ago
1995 (age 70):
Feb 27: It seems like I start all my notes with “Finally”. Well, today I finally got the leaves raked up in lower driveway and behind house. I used the trash bag frame with 33 gallon bags and it worked fine. I have five bags to be shredded “someday”.
1998 (age 73):
Feb 27: Didn’t get to sleep till after 4 AM—then slept till almost noon. My Dutch Gardens order came today, 5 boxes, $806 worth. Now I really have my work cut out for me. I must get the begonias potted and pot up the various perennials roots etc and get them under lights.
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I so like your mom’s bold purchases of bulbs, a whopping $800 worth. The garden was probably one of her only extravagances. So great to see Smokey swanning in the garden, blatantly hinting at his need for attention. Happy cat now that he is free to hit the garden trail. Happy trails to you, freed cat.
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Smokey says thanks. My mom spent more on bulbs for her own garden as I spend on all of Long Beach town.
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Some five star weeding again.
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