Monday, 13 June 2016
…a rainy day of blogging about the Sunday evening vigil in Astoria, reading sad news, repotting houseplants, and finally getting out into the garden for an hour of evening weeding and a few garden photos.
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
Morning rain made me wonder if we would be able to work. One weather app said we would have dryness all day, another said rain all day. We chanced it. I hoped to get a few plants planted in Long Beach and Fifth Street Park groomed at the least. It is an unusual amount of rain that makes it unnecessary to water the planters. We had had just that sort of rain.
Long Beach
As we pulled horsetail from the welcome sign, I noticed that on the back side, a whole section of missing white bacopa along the edge.
I decided later we would get soil from our pile at city works to fill in all the way along the sign garden; we have let the east end be unplanted for some reason. Laziness? Not enough soil there? If I have to get more bacopa, I might as well extend the planting.
We did our Fifth Street Park planting project.
Driving north on Boulevard, I noticed that a little popout on 7th and Boulevard had had its mugo pine cut to the ground so figured the same might have happened to the little pop out north of city hall. Yes it had! So we did some more weeding there, and went on to Coulter Park to do another little project. A huge Veterans Affairs van was parked by the garden so we had to park a half block away and break out the wheelbarrow.
We dumped our debris at city works and gathered buckets of soil for several places.
Funny that two really big vehicles had been in our desired spots! (The world does not revolve around our needs, I have noticed.)
Then I found some poppy seeds at Dennis Company…
We went back to city works to refill all our buckets with soil. We then had a look at Veterans Field’s gardens.
I thought…Imagine going to a dance club, the same sort that I used to love to go to back in Seattle. We don’t know when we will die, but if on the way to the nightclub, if you even had a premonition that tonight is the night of your death, how impossible would it be to imagine that your own death would be commemorated with flags at half staff all across the nation…how completely unthinkable that would be to envision. Yes, my heart is still breaking, just as it has for other shootings (high schools, Black churches, synagogues). This time, it is more personally affecting, because it is human nature to be able to imagine being caught up in such horror in a familiar setting, and a gay dance club is a familiar place to me.
Still, work continued in a somber mood.
Ilwaco boatyard
5:30 was too early to quit for the day so we spent another couple of hours at the boatyard garden, pulling pesky horsetail.
Allan clipped the blank stems from the blue globe thistle before I took my photo which was going to show how despite the sign, people are popping the heads off the flowers!
Some lilies were also gone. Dang it.
We got over halfway done with an imperfect weeding.
This productive day would have been consumed with all watering, watering, watering, had not the blissful rain let us accomplish all PROJECTS.
Ginger’s Garden Diaries
from my mother’s garden diaries of two decades ago
1997 (age 73):
June 12: 49th Wedding Anniversary. [Her husband, Bruce, had died in June 1995.]
I got a late start but did some good. I moved tomato and snapdragon flats to greenhouse and put them under lights. Finished planting the dianthus into the deep pots. In the fall I will put them out in flower beds.
June 13: 10:30-4:45 Long day. The Bulls won NBA title again. I set more tomato plants outside in a double row. These were the ones from the first planting that were too small to plant earlier. Picked berries—a full bowl (the deep yellow plastic bowl). Used Safer weedkiller on dandelions in front ditch and lower driveway.
1997 (age 74):
June 12: 72 degrees I had the first big picking up strawberries. It took an hour and I was hot so I came in and took care of the berries and then planted more seeds until 9:00. The Jazz beat the Bulls so it isn’t over yet. Game 6 is on Sunday.
June 13: 11:00 to 5:00 I watered plants in shop and then intended to put sawhorses behind house, so I can move tomatoes out so I can move seedling trays into greenhouse. I found myself planting mums in tam area then weeding patio bed and UDFB [Upper Driveway Flower Bed] areas. I pulled several plants of geraniums that have taken over, then planted mums and some asters in those areas. This was a good week as I worked outside every day.
The gardens look beautiful, Skyler. Ilwaco is all the more beautiful due to your efforts!
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Thanks, Lavinia!
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