Tuesday, 10 April 2018
I was mighty surprised to wake up to working weather.
I wish I could photograph white flowers well. I guess I need to read up on how to do it. I do find it helps to boost the highlights in editing.
Long Beach
I was eager to finish the mulching of the Long Beach trees and planters. The day would be interrupted by another project, but we got a good start while waiting for a text.
It was so windy….and not especially cold.
I love peony and fringed tulips. Some have turned to mush because of the rain, but not all.
A business had left out some flourescent tubes in the garden…for the city crew to pick up, apparently?? I hope no one decides it would be fun to break these into the garden bed.
Our text arrived that Sea Star Gardening had dropped off a fig tree for us, so we stopped Long Beach and drove a couple of miles south to
The Shelburne Hotel
When I had emailed owner Tiffany to ask if she’d like a fig tree in the back garden (a herbs and edibles theme), she replied that she had, the very night before, dreamed that she was trying to figure out where to put a fig tree there. That’s cosmic. I replied that it could go into a warm nook on the south wall (where it might eventually fill in the space and need some pruning. Maybe after we retire! If we ever do).
I fervently hoped that I would not find a stump under the tatty landscape fabric in that nook. I remembered how years ago a big ball of conifer grew in there. No stump was found, hallelujah!
There was much sotto voce and sometimes whispered argy bargy about proper depth of the hole, what to do with the gravel, and so on. We don’t want to end up on a Trip Advisor review as the arguing gardeners who ruined a guest’s peaceful afternoon.
We pulled out the lightweight fabric and used the gravel to make a building maintenance and wood protection U shaped edge, planted the tree, and put in some herbs for now (which eventually will get moved because of fig tree shade).
The six railroad tie enclosed squares in the back garden are going to be removed to make a big patio. I saved a French sorrel from one of those beds and planted it in front of the fig…It will be okay there for awhile. When we get the west beds cleared of orange montbretia, we will also save the many chives and make an edge out of them.
In the front garden, some Tulip ‘Lilac Wonder’ are left from bulb plantings I did over ten years ago.
Our project took a couple of hours (along with some weeding). Today would have been a good day to dig out orange montbretia in the sheltered, almost windless Shelburne garden, but instead we went back to
Long Beach
to finish mulching the trees and planters.
Just as we were leaving the Shelburne, I got a call from Parks Manager Mike that the crew had removed the huge miscanthus which had been crammed (by the original landscape architect) into a narrow bed in Fifth Street Park. We went to fix up that area first thing.
In the city works yard, where we bucketed up enough soil for the last two blocks, we saw the resident killdeer.
The wind of 25-35 mph had gotten not just pushy but cold, so the last two blocks were a miserable time. I had almost decided to leave it for another day. However, when loading the soil, I remembered that the new season of Deadliest Catch starts tonight. I would have felt weak and foolish if I had quit the job because of some cold dry wind, gone home, and found later that Deadliest Catch was on my DVR.
I had not taken many photos today because the wind sapped my enthusiasm. In the final two blocks, I managed a few.
We had enough buckets of soil left to weed and mulch the “tiny pop outs” on Ocean Beach Boulevard, a block north of city hall. That was the coldest and worst part of the the day.
I have decided to not battle the yellow evening primrose in these little beds, having read in The Evening Garden that it is fragrant at night. Neither of these get any supplemental water in summer unless we remember to bucket water them.
The red rhododendron is in bloom at city hall.
This mean it must be soon be time to make a spring visit to Steve and John’s Bayside Garden!
On the way home, we paused to photograph the welcome sign, where the tulips are coming on strong.
In the front, I tried a different Colorblends mix than usual, “Big Ups.”
At home, I was able to erase three jobs from the work board. (The roses thing is just to dig up a few more rugosa roses along the street edge of the beach approach for two friends who want some but were out of town during our clean up of that garden.)
If the forecast of rain and 45 mph wind comes true for tomorrow, it will most decidedly not be a work day.
Oh, spring just keeps getting and better with all those flowers! Yes, that pic of Deadliest Catch certainly puts other jobs in perspective. I don’t eat crab, but I hope people who do value it sufficiently.
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I hope so, too. Our crab fleet, with smaller round pots, is also a dangerous job with heartbreaking losses of life.
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There are patches, near the curb where passersby somehow manage to mistake garden for concrete, in my volunteer garden that have become compacted with blown in weeds.
The only solution now is to shovel it out. Then replace the soil, and carefully shake off and replant what can be saved.
On my to do list. Someday.
Good idea removing the miscanthus. And the planting of the fig tree, look forward to following the progress of the garden!
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Any edge where people can walk or stand, they will walk and stand.
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Figs? In Ilwaco? Does it get warm enough there? Brent, my colleague, calls them ‘dago plums’. I have several stock plants. I do not know the names of them, but most came from the Santa Clara Valley.
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I don’t think that nickname would go over well with my clients! I consider them mostly ornamental here but a garden owner did get delicious ripe fish from hers. Just a few.
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Figs are easily grown to the north, just across the border in Canada. Species like Italian Honey and Mediterranean, Brown Turkey and Desert King are more productive than those more commonly grown in California.
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That just seems weird; that the Desert King would be happy there! They like warmth.
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I was also surprised when I first successfully grew them.
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Thank you. I have grown Desert King here, and the one I just planted at Shelburne is a Brown Turkey, so I am glad to hear that is a good one.
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