Sunday, 10 November 2019
I was surprised to see one of my hamamelis (witch hazel) already in bloom.
Fall colour blazed in Ilwaco.



I do wish alders had good fall color. Their leaves just turn dull greeny-brown and fall off.

Ilwaco Community Building
We did fall clean up and leaf collecting.



The weekly Quaker meeting was in session. One member had good bumper stickers.
I could imagine going to this meeting. My long ago significant other, Bryan, was from a Quaker family, and his mother, Louise Runnings, was an inspiration to me, as was Laura Woodring, the Quaker mother of Montana Mary.
I trimmed some of the leaves from the hellebore in the entry garden (a bit early, but I don’t want to have to remember later in the year) and did not hoard all of the leaves for myself.
I worried that the heathers were too far out onto the sidewalk.
Heathers look awful trimmed back. The ones sprawling onto the sidewalk might have to come out in the spring. Meanwhile, they can have their winter flowers. Perhaps they can just stay until someone complains, which might never happen. We did trim the kinnickinnick.

I originally turned this job down because of the almost-monoculture of white winter-blooming heather (and the salal!). Allan convinced me to take it on. It is mostly his own particular job. Perhaps we can introduce some heather that blooms in the summer, just for variety.
I do love the wealth of autumn leaves.
The parking lot is one of weird and awkward slopes and steep angles, hard to walk on, some sort of engineering mistake, or so I have heard.
Ilwaco planters
We tidied up the city planters at city hall….
Now they are ready for the person in the office who puts out potted plants to take them over (I hope).
We went on until dark cleaning up as many of the Ilwaco planters and street tree gardens as possible, for the last time. We are giving up this job because of the bucket watering.
We dug golden oregano out of four of the planters where it had completely taken over. I had planted it in small amounts from starts of mine, in an attempt to be budget minded. It had gotten so vigorous in the last few years that I felt that it would daunt the creativity of whoever takes on the job.
It came out much quicker and easier than I had thought it would, thanks to the Root Slayer shovel.
A friend came by just in time to get a few free pieces; the rest will go to narrow, contained beds at the fire station.
The tree gardens got all tidied up, including the two with annoying perennial sweet pea and asters:


We ran out of daylight with four planters left to do.
Reading
Here are some takeaways from a memoir that I read last week, one that did not fit well into the narrative flow of this blog.
I had the amazing good fortune as a child to be taken camping by my parents by a river, with a rocky beach that had a grove of (maybe) willows, and in that grove I was surrounded and landed on by butterflies in the way that Burrough describes.
The memoir is not a collection of bucolic nature stories; it is mostly about Burroughs’ tyrannical and twisted father. Parts of it sounded so familiar to me, like this:
…my mother on the main floor, my dad in the basement, and me in the attic.
This passage…
..reminded my of the daily surge of bliss I felt in my 20s to be a grown up out on my own.
I also think, when I read friends’ (Facebook friends, mostly) stories of having had wonderful fathers, do they know how lucky they are?
What Augusten feels when he meets a father who is lovingly proud of his son:
So, if you have or had a good father, rejoice, and never take it for granted. (I must add that when I was 32 and suffering from a broken heart, my father wrote to me an astonishing letter of support, saying the heartbreaker in question did not deserve me and other such comforting words. It was so out of character from our usual relationship that I wish I could understand why…. Lately, I have realized how very little I know about my father. Did I ever ask him questions about his childhood in Chicago? If I did, the answers were not forthcoming and now I will never know.)
I think I have now read everything by Mr. Burroughs except for his latest book, which I have on order and await impatiently for winter reading. I was fascinated to realize that another memoir I read several years ago, Look Me in the Eye, about growing up autistic, was written by Augusten’s brother. I think I must reread it.
I’ve read two books by Augusten Burroughs and one by his brother. Augusten shocked me, but I didn’t turn away.The father-thing is one I wrestle with too. You and I–I think–have a lot in common. I just wrote a 1,700 word piece about this subject that I’d like to publish.–There’s a news blog that takes this sort of thing.
LOVE all the luscious color. I buy plants for color, but we don’t get the right cold at the right time here so, so far, no color…Am enjoying your posts!
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In an amazing co-incidence I just finished reading Running with Scissors by Burroughs. The book left me a bit disjointed, perhaps due to my perception that there was a blur between accurate memoir and imaginative re-telling.
My father did not have the easiest time of it, working long hard hours, and the victim of bad luck and circumstance. He tried his very best, and that quashes any quibbles I could raise about him “not being there”. My grandma would say, when money troubles come in the door, love goes out the window. And although love didn’t quite fly out, troubles can colour everything.
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After reading Wolf at the Table, I read several articles questioning the veracity of Burroughs’ memoirs. So I ordered the childhood memoir by his autistic brother to re-read and see how it matches up.
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I keep trying to persuade Mrs T to get some heather for winter colour but she doesn’t go for it.
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I agree with Mrs T 🙂
Sent from my iPad
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The fall color of the trees is stunning! I love heather. My sheltie dogs like to use them for beds to nap on (and I let them)–they are very tough once established.
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I like them in a right place, and an open sort of terraced garden like yours would be perfect for them.
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Does perennial pea get dug out, or do you just pull the tops off. I do both. Those that I don’t went get dug out; but there are many that are appealing enough to just leave where they are. We just need to pull the tops off when they get unsightly.
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I would pull them out if I could because they run so much…but I cannot get them out, so I just keep pulling the tops!
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Oh, those roots are quite sturdy. They can be like digging up four o’clock roots. They are not quite as bulky, but are about as firmly rooted.
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