Wednesday, 6 November 2019
The Planter Box
We started by picking up some horticultural lime and some bagged mulch at The Planter Box garden center.
The hens were almost irresistible:
I was amused by the names of some of the treats for real hens.
If only I had friends with hens, these would make a good holiday gift.
Long Beach
We returned to Fifth Street Park for more clean up.
SW quadrant was my first project:
I did not cut back much. These tall plants in the winter hide a mess of weedy old pampas grass behind the building (pampas grass not planted by us! something the original landscape architect chose).
Allan worked further on the SE quadrant….
…and then helped me in the garden in front of Captain Bob’s Chowder and Marsh’s Museum, an extension of the work we did two days ago.
I decided to cut back more tall perennials there, dropping the seedheads into the garden for the birds.
We pulled hesperantha from the walkway that goes to Captain Bob’s Chowder so that it will not interfere with the narcissi in early spring.
Allan had battled a recurring patch of the badaster.
I applied lime to this section of the park, which seems too wet and kind of sour (an unscientific assessment). Originally, I had hoped that lime would discourage the horsetail, but I found a blog post that makes me believe apparently not.
But a light application in a bed with no acid loving plants cannot hurt.
The weather was warm like summer. We ran a brief errand to the Boreas Inn where sunlight lit up their maple tree.
Back at Fifth Street Park, I started weeding the narrow bed in the NE quadrant while Allan pulled bindweed in the southeast.
I did not get far before we had to go. Allan had got me some leaves from his area of the park.
Mike’s garden
We returned to Ilwaco to apply the bagged mulch to Mike’s garden so that Allan would not have to schlep the heavy bags into and later out of our garage.
Yesterday:
Today:
We dumped our leaves on our lawn to dry out…
and headed off for dinner at five at…
The Depot Restaurant.
At last, we had managed to coordinate a burger night dinner with our beloved friends and former gardening clients Mary and Denny, former owners at Klipsan Beach Cottages. I had gardened for them, first with co gardener Robert and then with Allan, for at least twenty years till they retired last fall and moved to the nearby town of Naselle.
The only sadness to the visit was learning that our good friend, their dog Bella, a ten year old Great Pyrenees, is finding it harder to walk. We resolved to visit Bella when fall clean up is done.
At home, I had time to sit and finish an excellent book that has been bedtime reading for the past couple of weeks.
More on this book in a couple of days when I have a shorter post to which to attach my takeaways from it.
Mike’s mulched bed looks great. What a difference.
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Thanks!
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You inspired me to pull out all the badasters in a long, narrow garden bed. They had taken over, and were kind of boring. Now I have an open slate to add new plants in the spring.
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We just worked on a bed at the port today where they have imbedded themselves. I was so out of energy to pull them, so we just mulched and procrastinated!
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