Wednesday, 5 June 2019
Port of Ilwaco
We set out to weed all along Howerton Avenue’s curbside gardens in preparation for a Friday night Art Walk.
Allan started with the river rock curbside bed near the new bakery.
Allan’s photo
santolinas (Allan’s photos)
The new little bakery building:
Allan’s photo
…and the view from its patio:
Eventually, it will have a sit down café. (I got to pet the nice old dog shown in the bottom right of the bakery photo.)
a good old dog
I met the bakery owner and got permission to use the outdoor faucet (not yet installed) to water the curbside garden. Now every merchant is on board for letting me use water. That makes me so much happier than the troubles of previous years.
We saw the Fort George Brewery truck arrive at At the Helm Hotel (and Waterline Pub)…
By the time you read this, the place will be open for business. On the south side, a weedy swale has been replaced with a pub patio.
And another weedy swale is being cleared so that the sculpture shows for the first time in years. Perhaps someday it will function as a fountain again.
We carefully weeded the curbside gardens. We only do the ones on the street side of the sidewalk.
However, I did tidy up the sword fern patch at the upper right in early spring and worked on it a bit today because it bothered me to have dead fronds in there. Eventually, the whole inside garden will be sorted out by the new owners. It was a partially “native” landscape whose plants had run amok.
The wind had been strong, cold and annoying. When rain added itself…
…we went home for comforting bowls of chili.
When the rain stopped, we returned to the port and got a couple more beds done.
Allan’s photo
Santolina ‘Lemon Fizz’ reverting to green, as is its wont
a handsome cistus
a choice eryngium blooming like crazy
Allan used The Toy to clean up some armeria. It works a treat.
The skies reopened with rain and wind so cold that we felt like we were doing midwinter gardening.
Time for another interlude at home, the sort where you can’t relax, read, or get anything much done because one eye is always on the weather.
Finally, we were able to finish our day. This time, I had changed into my winter clothes. Allan weeded the river rock garden inside the sidewalk at Time Enough Books.
before
after
Somehow Allan has become the one who string trims this area by the Freedom Market:
When the Ox Eye daisies are done (a Class C noxious weed, I think), we will be able to do a more thorough weeding of the westernmost bed.
We were able to get all the way to the west end by 7 PM. I had time to buy my “Green Revolution 2:1” CBD tincture that is so effective at preventing my back from spasming.
I had some plants for Alicia of the Nora House (the much missed Nora being her grandma). We were invited to dinner there with her and her friend Lecia.
Skooter wanted to join us….
Allan’s photo
…to dine on Lecia’s scrumptious quiche.
We talked about our grandmas and how much we miss them.
Lecia was smitten with Skooter.
Allan’s photo
After dinner, we walked all around our garden. Lecia took lots of photos…
Allan’s photo
She especially loved the fairy doors…and Frosty, who accompanied us for part of the tour.
I was lucky to meet Nora. She had some wonderful stories about the area. Your photos today make me homesick for the Northwest!
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Miss you!
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I love the curbside gardens! Alan and I admired them (and the boatyard garden) when we were there on June 8th. I think we are all smitten with Skooter! What a look of longing he had at the window of the Nora House.
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Thank you! It was great to see you.
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My santolina does not look like ‘that’! It has bad bald spots in it. I think it got that way back when no one sheared it back. It is slowly filling back in, but is also getting too old to survive much longer. Like lavender, it layered itself, so the new plants will be shorn as they should, although they will likely always be misshapen. I do not care though. It is in an unrefined landscape. I sort of like it in more refined landscapes too, although It think it looks silly in a knot garden or shorn as such.
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I just love those round shapes. I first saw them in a garden show featuring a California garden.
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I like their resiliency! The aromatic foliage is alluring too, although I realize that those who do not work with do not understand that quality.
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Anyone who admires them in my presence is instructed to smell the foliage, followed by their look of delight.
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When I shear them, I take the scraps to someone else I work with because he puts them on the dashboard of his pickup.
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P.S. It is one of the very few tidy effects in any of my gardens. That and a nice crisp half moon edge.
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Tidy? That makes them seem out of place for your gardens. I suppose they are, but they still look informal as they grow and bloom, just like lavender. I nice well rounded form is nice, but they are not exactly tailored or perfectly symmetrical.
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That santolina is very fine and well photographed. On behalf of ox-eye daisy lovers everywhere, I deprecate your disparaging remark.
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I do like them very much and wish they were not deprecated over here. 🙂
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Ah that santolina pic, third from the beginning of the post! Mine are aspiring to look that good – but a long way to go. I like Ox Eye daisies.
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Thanks and me, too.
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