Sunday, 14 May 2017
It is the official start of annuals planting time; the annuals in waiting here can now stay out of the greenhouse overnight. My garden is not well weeded enough to plant very many annuals (mostly cosmos) in it yet. As for going to work…Sunday is not a good day for public gardening in tourist gardens—a good excuse for another day off for me.
We had about an hour to putter before going on an errand.
My conifer experiment has not worked out well. First, I did not keep track of the names. Then, I started to lose some of my favourites over this past winter:
I read in passing in a Hardy Plant Society email (that I can’t seem to find again) that conifers don’t like to be touched. It is quite possible that I overcrowded them. They were all pretty fine, though, until this past, cold, wet winter.
I heard much yowling and tracked down Onyx from next door, facing down Skooter, with some orange fur on his mouth. This does not mean much, as Skooter is blowing his winter coat and leaving orange fur everywhere.
Before I got more than a few weeds pulled, it was time to do some birthday shopping at the Port, for Melissa.
I also see a lot of Geranium robertianium (Stinking Bob), and contemplated whether or not it is on the noxious weed list. I looked later, and yes, it is, as a Class B weed. So….I need to pull it, but not today.
In Time Enough Books:
I saw and ignored some weeds in the curbside garden nearby (although I am still thinking about them now).
With presents acquired, we went back home, where I began weeding the back garden’s big east bed while Allan returned to his weeding at the Ilwaco Community Building.
I will show you one of my poor Nicotiana’s, which have never been attacked by snails and slugs like this in my experience. I even found some sanguisorbas all chewed up. Unusual.
Fortunately for me, Allan returned about then and dug that grass up for me, and dumped my heavy wheelbarrow of weeds.
He then went off boating on Black Lake, while I continued weeding.
My project had started badly, with a headache that migraine medicine would not touch other than to make me tired. In the late afternoon, I realized the headache was gone—joy!—and that I was going to be able to finish the entire east bed.
All the yellow flowering creeping buttercups went away, and very satisfactory it is to pull them out in loose, rich soil. The best tool I have ever found for hoiking them out is the ho-mi:
Fortunately, I had another wheelbarrow available.
I stopped weeding at 7 PM and enjoyed the garden as I applied more Sluggo.
Allan’s project at the Ilwaco Community Building:
He said the hardest part was the salal at the back of the tiered garden…of course. The salal situation there is why it is Allan’s job; I at first refused to even consider the job because working around that plant just bugs me. Since it was planted there on purpose, there is (probably) a limit to how much we can remove. Although I did make it clear we’d (he’d) only take it on if we could make the plant decisions.
ALL that salal could go, and be replaced with, say, sword ferns (which I could maybe get for free, because of budgetary constraints). The maintenance would then take less time in the future.
Allan’s well deserved evening sail on Black Lake:
There will be more boating excursions coming up as soon as Annuals Planting Time is over. One item got erased from the “at home” tasks on the workboard.
I hope the weather tomorrow permits the start of planting.
Love the photo of the bed with the purple “heads” and also the cat bench with Skooter on it. You have a lot of garden (like me) to weed, but it’s looking great. I had no idea that conifers didn’t like to be touched.
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Oh, my — orange on purple. What a delight!
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It must be terrible only being a Class B weed,. What a come down in the weed community.
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😀
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The Ho-mi diggers look like a good garden tool.
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