Monday, 5 August 2019
Watering, watering, watering gets tiresome in August.
Long Beach
Allan watered the trees and two and a bit blocks worth of planters and I did the rest of the planters. There are 37 plumbed planters downtown and 6 more that need bucket watering.
I love the ratibidia and want to put it in all the planters next year.
I am very pleased with Gaura (smaller ones than ‘Whirling Butterfly’) as the center plants.
A gardener from out of town (cannot remember who) recently complimented me on how full the planters are, with no soil showing. (Most of them; some recently re-done ones have not yet filled in.)
I did not mind the brisk wind today because otherwise the 70 plus temperature would have been uncomfortable.
I wish I could remember the cultivar name of this phygelius with dark foliage.
I once knew the name well and have been trying to remember it for over five years.
In the planter that we partially dug out two years ago to get rid of the wire vine, it is reappearing. Again. We had dug it out completely last fall (all soil gone!) because the vine came back. Now it is emerging again along the edges; its roots must be way way down in the large chunky gravel under the fabric that is about a foot down. We had replaced the fabric after digging in the rocks for roots, apparently to no avail.
Before our re-do, it looked like this:
When we retire from Long Beach, someone might let it get that way again.
In the planter by the World’s End Pub, I simply must get the city crew to dig out the rose by the pole. We do not want to because of the plumbing and wiring.
The climbing rose, planted years ago by a volunteer, was yellow and has reverted to rootstock with muddy red flowers, but it never blooms because I can’t let the canes stick out into traffic (and it is ugly). With a bustling new business about to open, I must make this planter more showy along the edge.
Moving on….
I have gone more toward perennials that need little deadheading, but I will persist in planting the Cosmos ‘Sonata’ that needs to be tidied twice a week.
In the Veterans Field arc garden, one eryngium had diseased foliage.
I have never seen that before.
I realized that the Rosa rugosa ‘Alba’ on the south side of the police station had to be sheared for sidewalk access.
The Toy made short work of that and of trimming lady’s mantle in Fifth Street Park.
The lady’s mantle will leaf out soon with fresh new foliage.
It was too much work for today to shear the larger bed under three trees.
Also in Fifth Street Park, my best stand of sweet peas has such soggy feet that it is getting mildewed.
Apparently, I need to find a smallish vine that likes wet feet. Except that then the sprinklers might be changed and it would be dry.
I also found a hole in the ground that indicated to me that someone swiped a Double Click cosmos plant.
Ilwaco
I got to go home, water my potted plants, and write a couple of blog posts while Allan watered the Ilwaco planters.
He scored on some excellent boxes at the bins where free wood is dumped.
If strong enough, they would make great planters, if not—storage. Finders keepers!
Because we both have iPhones that are almost impossible to charge up, tomorrow is an errand day.
I just recently had the battery replaced on my 4-year-old iPhone 6, and wow! what a difference it makes. It only cost $50. Mareena
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Cool. We’d have to send ours away…I think. No apple stores within 2.5 hours of here.
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I had it done in an independent shop (Olympia iPhone Repair), in Olympia WA (only a two-hour drive for me :- ) Mareena
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I love the murals on the wall down fish alley!
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Agreed, they are gorgeous, and the people depicted are actual LB residents.
Sent from my iPad
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A very useful set of boxes.
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Four of those boxes would look nice mounted on a fence panel for shelving. Great find!
All your diligent watering has paid off because for August, the planters look fresh and healthy.
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Yes!!! Shelving!! You’d think I’d have thought of that after our visit to Cindy’s garden. I will lobby for that. Would be good in my Greenhouse annex, too.
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What a great score with those boxes! I’m envious.
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Really good luck because that free pile gets well picked over.
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Is wire vine considered to be an invasive exotic there? Does it escape into the wild?
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I don’t know. But I have seen it run rampant all over a garden bed (not mine, a garden I toured). Silly me, I thought it was a house plant and would only survive in that planter for the summer and then die completely over winter.
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That is how I met it! I thought it was so innocent until I saw it overwhelming cypress trees down near the beach. An arborist told me that it is very invasive, but after all these years, I have not seen it go anywhere else.
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