Tuesday, 24 April 2018
The weather seemed disturbingly warm as we went to work.
First, we did a couple of volunteer projects, planting a few perennials and some seeds at the fire station, and one agastache at the post office, where we happened to learn that a crew was about to power wash and paint the building. Oddly, it seemed they did not have a hose and so they borrowed ours, and our special wrench that turns on the water. We plunged in and moved all the rocks away from the bottom of the wall at the back of the garden. They had been placed there by us years ago, when we dug up the lawn to make the garden and found that we had revealed an unpainted strip. It will be good to have that strip painted and to have a path for walking to the faucet without the rocks in the way.
Of course, I fretted about potential damage to the lilies that grow near the back. The postmistress said she would put boxes over them. It was not till later in the day that I realized what she meant. We encountered Mayor Gary there and he told us we could take out the old and defunct irrigation hoses in the fire station garden.
A few blocks east, at Mike’s garden, we realized it had become painfully hot. We weeded and fertilized and got a few agastaches and eryngiums in the ground to try to make this odd little afterthought of an area look better:
Suddenly I could not take the heat anymore, so without finishing the weeding of the gravel path, we went home. I learned that it was 81 degrees, and a friend got a reading of 87 out on the Bolstad beach approach.
Skooter was snoozing on the bed.
We stayed indoors from two till six PM waiting for the temperature to drop. I was glad to rest and finish reading A Breath from Elsewhere by Mirabel Osler, as I am feeling puny with sniffles and sneezes and just a bit of a cough. Not leaving my comfy chair, I made a blog post for the next morning and then accidentally published it. I blame an overheated brain. It was still 79F at 5:30.
With two hours of daylight left, I dug up about fifteen starts of Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, admiring some tulips on the way into the back garden.
We quested fruitlessly for our faucet wrench back at the post office. We did find the sort of boxes that the postmistress used to protect the lilies:
She is wonderful. The priority mail boxes made me laugh. They were boxes that customers had opened up the wrong way.
At the fire station, Allan removed the old hoses from the corner garden while I planted the sedums along the west side.
No before photo was taken of the corner garden hoses. I have this one from earlier.
And tonight:
On the south side of the port office, we planted Agastache ‘Acapulco Salmon and Pink’ and ‘Sangria’ and some santolinas where Allan had dug out old, woody lavenders.
At home, the work board had gotten a tiny bit shorter:
Wow! Over 80 degrees — that’s some heat! Lucky you were there to provide the power washers with their equipment. What were they planning to wash the walls with?
Thanks for pics of kitty tootsies. They are delightful!
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It’s a mystery why they needed our hoses but we do like to be helpful.
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I was just about to ask how warm is too warm. That is about as warm at it was for us. It was splendid! Is that a problem because the weather had been cooler so far?
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Not a problem for the plants, just for me.
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The tulips are delightful.
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Thank you, Mr T
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Cute pictures of Skooter and Frosty! It has been hot here, too. I quit work in the garden when it gets to the high 70s.
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Me, too, except for watering when needs must. I whinge from 68 on up.
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