Tuesday, 24 May 2016
I do like a day spent all in Ilwaco. With work never more than a few blocks from home, it feels the most comfortable of all work environments. These all Ilwaco days are rare because, in order to not shock the budget, I do refrain from achieving complete perfection in the public gardens except for before the big holidays and events: Children’s Parade and Blessing of the Fleet day, Memorial Day, July 4th weekend, Tuna Classic, Slow Drag, Blues and Seafood, and so on. This means that about once a month in gardening season I get to indulge in an all Ilwaco day.
We began by weeding gardens along Howerton Avenue.
By the old Wade Gallery (now owned by Fort George Brewery who have given us watering permission, bless them), I reflected that the soil needs mulching this fall.
At the Craft 3 bank building, we did some pruning for sightlines.
I finally made the decision to take a pair of wax myrtles to the ground. They have been pruned harshly in the past (not by us) and looked all stumpy but with fresh new growth at the base.
Pretty shocking, but we did the same thing to a myrtle just one garden west, and it has come back nicely and is easy to keep low and shapely.
My favourite garden bed is still the same as last year: the one with the clipped wax myrtle. Allan took some photos of it at my request:
We worked our way west and when we got to the port office curbside garden, I went to the south side of the building to check on the little garden there.
Each allium has just one flower per year, a flower that will dry and look grand on the stem all summer long. Nancy and April in the port office were so mad when they saw that the one above had been picked that they made a sign.
I also learned that one of the two businesses that wouldn’t let us use their hose for the curbside bed is gone. I hope the new business going into its place, which happens to be a marijuana shop (so I hear), will be friendly enough toward plants to be generous with a splash of water during the dry season.
I would be surprised if they were not kind to plant life. Fortunately, it has been raining enough lately that I don’t have to worry about that at the moment.
After weeding the cursbide gardens, Allan left me at the boatyard and went off to water Ilwaco planters and street trees with the water trailer. As I pulled horsetail and bindweed, I reflected after awhile that he was taking a terribly long time. He returned at almost sunset with the dire news that the water pump had stopped working, necessitating watering with just gravity feed. Eventually, that had taken too long so he left me again to dump debris and then finish the last few planters with hand-lugged buckets, the old way. I kept weeding even though I was longing to stop.
I hadn’t gotten the bed on the south side of the gate weeded. It has so much less horsetail and bindweed that I said it would just have to do for the Memorial Day weekend. We were out of time for this project.
Very last task: At my request, Allan shifted one of our polite Do Not Pick signs to hang right over the plant that gets picked the most. Or rather, people try to pick it, but the stem is tough and often the flower just gets twisted and bent over, and then sometimes the would-be pickers return with clippers.
While he was zip tying the sign onto the fence, a fellow from the Harvey O chatted with us and admired the gardens. He imparted the interesting information that Harvey O is an old boat with a lot of history, can be seen in a video at the local museum, and used to be docked in Juneau, Alaska.
I wrote a couple of blog posts about the boatyard in my Ilwaco blog, reflecting in one that boats are more often named for women than for men.
The day had turned out to be longer than I’d expected (9.5 hours), and it was a little frustrating to not get the whole boatyard weeded. It was no doubt more frustrating for Allan who spent another hour after dark working on the pump, and satisfying that he managed to fix it.
Meanwhile in Scotland…(yesterday)
I forgot to add this yesterday: On our way home from work I read the Tootlepedal blog, after having been advised by Mr T. in a comment on my blog that I might want to be sitting down while reading it. I was sitting, in the van, and a good thing, because there were Garden Tour Nancy and her spouse, Phil, at Mr and Mrs T’s garden. Even though I knew they were visiting Scotland, and that Nancy is a daily reader of that excellent blog, it had never occurred to me they might visit Langholm. (I probably would have been too shy.) Today via email, Nancy sent me these photos:
You can read all about it from Mr Tootlepedal’s point of view here.
I usually do not envy travel. I have to admit I felt a stab of it, not initially, but later when I thought more about it! I was comforted by Mr T’s own comment that due to the distance and his dislike of flying, he would be unlikely to take them up on the invitation to come to the peninsula garden tour. (I would love if they did visit. His comment made me feel less alone in my disinclination to travel long distances; financial conditions are another reason, of course.) From reading his blog every day, I sometimes almost feel like I am standing in Mrs. T’s garden anyway.
Ginger’s Garden Diaries
from my mother’s garden diaries of two decades ago
1997 (age 73):
May 24: After going to the store, I worked outside. I planted Freesia by the Hydrangea; caladiums in a container. In the front of the tam area [formerly juniper tams, now flowers, by the road], I planted 100+ anemones, Pulmonarias, and the new mums, also the yellow daylilies (Stella D’Oro) from Raintree last year. I came in at 5:00 shaking from exhaustion.
We’re down for the holiday weekend and the gardens all look lovely.
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Thanks, Lizann. We hear it is busy out there with lots of people!
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The gardens look great! Glad Phil and Nancy had a chance to visit the Tootlepedals.
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I am very happy to see the Eryngium (one of my favourite flowers) and the beautiful poppies. You are well ahead of us.
I am glad that the pictures of your friends in our garden arrived safely. I would like to travel widely but apart from the fear of flying and the cost, there is the time that it all takes to consider as well. I fear that I will always be a stick-in-the-mud. If you do come, don’t be shy. You would be very welcome.
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Thank you, Mr T!
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