Tuesday, 13 February 2018
We were glad to being the day quite late in the morning.
By the time we started work, we had a calm, not windy, and not too cold day to begin the spring clean up of the Howerton Avenue curbside gardens and the port office garden.
The “drive over garden”:
I got Allan to tackle this mugo pine, which is too big and I think will be removed this year.
Some new signage at the Ilwaco pavilion:
The bed by the pavilion, from which we had had some large shrubs removed last fall, had responded with lots of little weeds. It’s tedious to weed big bare areas that don’t have cool plants filled in yet.
I am 99% percent sure that the two stumps of wax myrtle will revive and can then be kept low.
I got to meet the owner of this truck, which I’ve admired parked in Long Beach. She says it has been officially tested to be sturdy and roadworthy.
We planted some Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ in the CoHo Charters lava rock bed.
I am going to get some white heathers, just three (or one!) to match up with the white heathers at the other end. I had told CoHo Charters’ Captain Butch that I just could no longer stand the boredom of weeding plain lava rock. So I have permission to make it more interesting.
Finally, we tidied up the bed by the old Wade Gallery, which is soon going to be occupied by David Jensen’s architecture firm.
Allan got some photos of a view in a city employees area at the east end of the port.
Wednesday, 14 February 2018
We planted a few starts of Solidago ‘Fireworks’ at the boatyard garden.
We’ll be back to this garden before long to trim the santolinas.
The weather turned unpromising. Shortly after starting work on Howerton, we sat out a squall.
Soon, though, we were back at it. Allan took all the rest of the gardening photos today.
I stood up fast and my back went so painfully SPROING that I had to go stand against a wall for awhile to straighten up. I had run out of Ethos 2:1 tincture a couple of days ago.
We clipped grasses and santolinas and did considerable weeding down by the new Skywater art gallery and the Freedom (marijuana) Market. I shopped, too, and bought myself some more Ethos 2:1 in hope of fending off more back pain. I talked to the Freedom Market manager about how last year, little plant starts I put in their shop garden got stolen. This year, they have better security cameras and so I have tried again.
In the curbside gardens:
That reminds me of how I made a composite photo last year of nassella (the grass, above) mingling with my hair.
A cold wind made the end of the workday uncomfortable. We prevailed. Allan weeded the Salt Hotel curbside garden and I noticed a project there for tomorrow.
Thursday, 15 February 2018
Despite a cold wind, again, I was determined to finish Howerton today. (Allan took all but two of today’s photos.)
We went back to Salt with some clumps of Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, my go-to when I need some free plants to fill in.
We did more weeding in the two westernmost beds (Freedom Market, Skywater), and I trimmed some more santolinas at Time Enough Books.
We had one half of the old Shorebank garden left to weed. I had been gathering some of my good Eryngiums and salvias that were struggling last year in dry areas, and we put them into the Shorebank area that WE water.
Finally, all we had left was the easternmost garden bed.
I was too cold and busy to even walk across the parking lot and look at the marina.
I had suddenly decided that all the old nassella had to go, making this area a much bigger job than I had planned.
At home, Devery’s cat, Jazmine, watched Allan unhook the trailer.
Over the past three days, we have brought home so much compostable material that two compost bins have gotten filled to the brim.
North Beach Garden Gang meeting and dinner
We are getting back on schedule now with our regular meetings with Dave and Melissa (Sea Star Gardening). It is satisfying and comforting to catch up with each other’s garden projects.
The [pickled fish] is in Adrift Hotel. The owners of Adrift, Inn at Discovery Coast, and Ashore Hotel in Seaside are taking on the Shelburne Hotel. We are meeting with them tomorrow about the Shelburne garden, which I cared for between about 1996? and 2009?
Next day:
The work board shows some exciting news. Unfortunately, we are due for light snow, wind, and 20 degree weather (at night) through Monday. I’ll focus on my book lists postings and then:
I woke up to -6 this morning. Oh, I find so much joy looking at these beautiful plants you tend. It’s also nice to be reminded what a lot of work goes into maintaining them, so good to see those photos too. (Love the one of the grass & your hair.) Nice to see you get a yummy reward at dinnertime.
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Brrrr. For my own sake I oft wish you lived in the NW.
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I always like seeing your food pictures. Everything looks so good and so unexpected in your location. I like the bouquets, too. And the bulbs. Down here in southern California, blue fescue is the only grass that looks good without a lot of maintenance!
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Thanks! I like blue fescue but even when combed it gets tatty after a few years.
We do have Very good restaurants here. I do miss really good Chinese food, and we completely lack Vietnamese and Ethiopian restaurants. I miss that!
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My staycation ended today . 3 hours in the garden. And it’s 77 in northern Virginia! We has snow last Saturday.
I like your blue coated canine helper.
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It’s a little hard (for me) when staycation ends.
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What a great picture of you in the grass! I’m just amazed at how much you and Allen have accomplished. The food looks delicious and Jasmine is just adorable.
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Thank you! We are back to winter now, with snowy rain and snow predicted for tonight.
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It was -21 here this a.m. Shot up all the way to +2 by 2:00p.m.
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Montana Mary was just telling me how cold it is near Big Timber!
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That cold wind sounds familiar. I hope that you get some warmer weather soon.
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Thanks, Mr T! Today was rain mixed with snow. Snow would have been pretty on the garden.
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Oh that sad mugo pine in the median! It wants to be in someone’s backyard where it can be appreciated. A common juniper would have worked as well in the median where people just drive past it.
It is nice that you are able to do all this work. We have planter boxes downtown that residents maintain. I really like mine, but some are more refined than they should be. We have low fences around them that make it more difficult to work in them.
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It would be nice, though, to have low fences that kept people from sitting.
A lot of the planting at the Port, before I was involved, was huge shrubs, huge phormiums, and pampas grass. All of which were bad for the sight lines of the many little driveways. We have slowly been fixing that.
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I would not have guessed that you could grow phormiums there! We have them in medians here, but there is enough space for them. I do not like medians to be landscaped in a fancy way. Motorists can not tell the difference between fancy gardens and low maintenance shrubbery. As a horticulturist, I do not want to be working out there with all the traffic speeding by, and I certainly do not want my crews out there. Fancy landscapes should be in parks on on the sides of roads where people can appreciate them.
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Phormiums get huge here. But I have gone off them because they get very tatty in winter and the blades are hard to cut and they never look nice once they are hacked and regrow. I would hate to work on a median. I feel much sympathy for the gardeners when I see median gardens on trips to the city.
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So, you might have noticed the trend for elaborate landscapes out in medians where they do not get noticed much, while parks and places that actually get used get minimal landscaping. some cities have arbors with wisteria vines on them! They need so much maintenance.
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Oh, the gardens, by the way, are not exactly medians; as I said in another comment, I would hate that! They have a sidewalk on one side so they have appreciative pedestrian traffic.
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Yes, I got that. They are like out planter boxes downtown. I do not mind gardening there because people enjoy the landscapes, flowers and such. It is cool that we get to do what we want with them, and that they are all so unique. I happen to have big aeoniums in mine. People who like them can take pieces. I wish I could plant something more fun than aeoniums, but nothing else can spare as many cuttings, besides, everyone else seems to really dig the aeoniums in conjunction with the nasturtiums.
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Here, aeoniums would be a real treat! They are not hardy and would also get swiped.
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Oh, of course. You could not plant them there. I did not intend to plant mine. I just happened to have two pieces laying around, and plugged them into the planter box. They grew like aeoniums do, and are quite large now.
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Our friends Steve and John, of the garden I call The Bayside Garden, have a green roof planted with succulents that were given to them by someone who worked? in a California garden that is well known but I forget the name. Most of the plants freeze out in winter and then she sends them more…At least, I think that is how it goes. I’ll find out what the garden is.
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How sad that they can not survive all year. My aeoniums really look best as mature specimens.
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I’ve known people to bring them through in a cold greenhouse. (Including me.) But they always look stressed after winter.
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