20 March: sweet pea planting begins

Wednesday, 20 March 2019

The Shelburne Hotel

Allan examined the wisteria that we (mostly he) pruned a month ago. The buds are just barely showing. He was able to remove some more branches. Until they fully bud out, it is hard to tell what has been cut and what is still alive.

He checked the planters on the decks and planted some night scented stock, tigridia, and sparaxis in the bigger ones.

Tulipa sylvestris is the yellow.

I got the sweet peas planted all along the fence and mulched with Gardner and Bloome Harvest Supreme.

Allan watered the garden because it has been so hot, dry, and windy.

The wind was still mildly annoying. I must say that both yesterday and today were too hot for my comfort at 72 F. But…mustn’t grumble. A cold rainy day would have been worse.

Sun and shade

My Melianthus major survived the cold here and will have its old stems cut down after this weekend’s Celtic music festival. I thought the garden needed some height right now.

Long Beach

We picked up our check at city hall and learned that it’s been suggested that planting wildflowers is a solution for the beach approach planter thievery. That won’t work out there in the dry salty wind unless the planters get watered regularly (and not by us hauling buckets). The watering has to become part of the same it’s water truck routine as the watering of the hanging baskets…not as often but at least a couple of times a week. So far, wildflowers in general (poppies, for example) are not drought tolerant enough to take the beach front conditions without supplemental water. Only the plants most desirable to thieves…lavender, sea thrift, santolina…survive out there with no summer water.

I was cheered up from my brooding about it by the narcissi on the north side of city hall…

…and later by some street tree and planter narcissi.

We planted the sweet peas in Fifth Street Park. This involved a lot of hesperantha (formerly schizostylis) removal. It is so lovely in autumn and such a pest the rest of the year.

Allan removed the horrible mildew-prone Dorothy Perkins rose on the low fence in front of Captain Bob’s Chowder. Because of the low fence height and the narrow driveway, we can hardly let it bloom at all without it sticking out in the way of vehicles, and what blooms it did have were always nasty white with powdery mildew.

Allan’s photos:

I added some sparaxis and tigridia to the two nearby planters that we redid last year.

More glorious Tulipa sylvestris

I had thought we might get Diane’s sweet peas planted today, as well. No. The park took us well into the early evening.

Reading

Over the last couple of weeks, distracted by garden shows to watch, I slowly read a book at bedtime.

While I enjoyed it, I liked his later book, Sourdough, better.

Here are my favourite bits.

The passage below reminded me of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City (San Francisco).

I have been feeling lately like I have lived an awfully long time, and also that having fifteen reasonably healthy years to go is awfully short. Here are the thoughts of a much younger character:

On the work board, the sweet pea jobs have begun to disappear. The beach approach weeding is assuming a low priority at the moment as I am more interested in a day of mulching and improving the Boreas Inn garden and another day of sorting out, deep weeding, and some rearranging of the Shelburne garden.