Sunday, 17 February 2019
I’m still blogging on my pad and still using my often not very crisp iPhone camera, because I don’t feel like booting up and I haven’t looked for my good work-blog camera yet. Soon I will get back into the proper work season blogging mode.
On our way to work, we paused at Black Lake so that Allan could photograph the swans. Their return is a local sign of spring.
On our first day back on the job, we began, as we usually do, with Fifth Street Park and the main street planters in Long Beach. While Allan worked on the park, I walked around four out of six blocks of street trees and planters.
I had not much wanted to return to work. The first block had some disheartening sights that increased my longing for staycation.
A big hole had been dug in one planter and not filled in…and I have no soil pile to use to fill it in. Tulip bulbs were sliced in half. This was surely because of some electrical problem with the lamp pole and outlet…
The deer have been eating the tulips at the Seventh Street intersection. Why do I keep trying tulips there?
This especially weedy tree garden will wait till we do a careful go round of all the trees and are parked next to it.
A sight that would have been more disheartening if the plant had died:
Another hole had been dug and one of my precious agastaches has been sitting on top of the soil all winter. It lived, and I was able to divide it into three plants.
Most of the planters needed light weeding and clipping. The Toy (my new Stihl rechargeable trimmer) made the job go much faster. We have purchased a second one so we don’t fight over it.
Another helpful new thing is that Allan put new tires on the green wheelie cart. It used to rumble so loudly that I often carried it, not wanting my approach to be so conspicuous. Now it rolls along with a subtle sound, and I will therefore use it much more often.
Some changes in town….
The smoke shop has moved to next to the pharmacy, in a location with no planter. I will miss the owner’s protective attitude toward the city planter.
The pet shop has closed.
And a brand-new-last-year tattoo shop is apparently going to be a barber shop now.
In all the planters, crocuses and iris reticulata and snowdrops are blooming. I hope they are being noticed. I did hear one woman comment about all the wonderful spring flowers.
By the time I had walked around the four blocks, I had remembered that I love my job and had mentally returned to a working frame of mind….although I will welcome rainy days off in the next month.
Allan’s photos in Fifth Street Park:
As we finished cleaning up, Cathy, whose restaurant, Captain Bob’s Chowder, is behind the park, came out to chat and gave us a plate of fries. They did not last long.
I decided to just dump the grass debris at city works. It would be too much of a mess to haul it back to our compost pile at home.
Allan almost got me a good rock from the dump pile, until he found it was like an iceberg, mostly buried.
The pussy willows are blooming behind the dump area.
We dined at a special Shelburne Restaurant dinner, cooked by the chefs of an Astoria food truck called the Roll and Bowl.
The Shelburne garden has only a few spring flowers so far.
Tonight’s special menu:
Allan ordered a drink called Penicillin, with whiskey, and Laphroiag single malt scotch and ginger. It is my new favourite. I love the copper mug.
We tried a little of almost everything on the special menu.
All was wonderful. The yam press box was my favourite and would be worth a trip over the bridge to get more.
At home, I have been creating a work board for the wake up call to each garden. (I see I forgot to add The Depot.)
Today, I was able to erase one thing. You may notice that I did not accomplish any of the indoor at home tasks for the second staycation in a row. Too many British gardening shows to watch.
I swear I will get it together on the next rainy day to find a working camera and start getting brighter and crisper photos! Thanks for your forbearance as we segue out of deep staycation.
Swans! Wonderful! (I was going to say they are so elegant, but then that last one just had to dive under the water.) And allow me to comment on all the lovely spring flowers, too. With ice all around me here, I am happy to see spring popping up on the coast.
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I hope your spring is not too far off.
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While I know you have to work and am glad you’ve stepped into that frame of mind, I will definitely miss your stay-cation posts about books and your personal garden. Mary Rose is right, despite the losses, the spring flowers are beautiful! Glad spring is around the corner for Ilwaco.
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I hope to work less this year so I can strike a balance between my garden and work gardens. Since I want to keep going (at least with Ilwaco public gardens and the Shelburne Hotel) for several more years, and have assorted age related arthritic pains, I need to pace myself.
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So lucky you are that Spring is already on its way–here we are still waiting for the snow to melt! We have too many deer to even dream of tulips but I think that the scilla, reticulata, snowdrops and hyacinth are so beautiful that I have forgotten about tulips…
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I am glad that narcissus is my favourite flower instead of tulips!
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The colorful spring bulbs in bloom are a welcome sight! You had a nice blue sky that day, too. I do hope you have a lighter work schedule this year.
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I hope I can keep to a lighter schedule. I already took back an old job that had been neglected, which will not entirely fill the time we used to spend on Klipsan Beach Cottages. I did not mean to do it….but I did.
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Well done for getting back into the swing of things so swiftly.
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Thanks, Mr T!
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Gads! I hate when work must be done in planter boxes. Many of my aeoniums were crushed by someone who repaired a valve in my planter box. I offered to do it myself to avoid the damage, but never heard back. Then someone cut one of my rosemary to the ground to repair a broken tile underneath it. Just yesterday, I notices that the valley oak that I planted in the parking lot of Felton Covered Bridge Park was AGAIN gouged by the weed eater!
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I hate that! So maddening.
I’m just waiting for all my grape hyacinth that I planted along the edge of a narrow garden that is supposed to be red white and blue to be destroyed by the string trimmer. Last year they got all trimmed off WHILE they were blooming.
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Right across the road are two flowering crabapples that get chopped back (but not pollarded) annually, just before bloom. Goodness! I could wear myself out fretting of such atrocities.
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That kind of pruning is madness.
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It defeats the purpose of the trees. I would prefer to just cut the trees down and put something else there. I mean, the trees are not really doing anything, and they are rather unsightly.
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