Saturday, 16 January 2021
At home
Because I emerged from the house at noon, I thought I would get ever so much done in the following four and a half hours. It was not to be. I had little to show for the gardening day.
On my agenda today was the clipping of the straight suckers that come up from the base of my contorted filbert. In the course of clipping them, I decided to lift up the skirts of the shrub. Over a decade ago, I toured a memorable garden near Olympia and was impressed with how its contorted filbert was pruned:
I don’t have a good before photo from today, as often happens when I decided to do something spontaneous. Here is one from a few days ago….
Here is the after, from the other side.
I like that I can see the under planting now….although that variegated grass appears to have half reverted to green. So I have a whole pile of contorted filbert branches, mostly smallish, in case anyone wants them for winter bouquets.
The other thing on my list was to plant some gallon sized Euonymus ‘Green Spire’, grown from cuttings and well-rooted in the front garden. They were going yellowish in the pots, not good enough for the plant sale. I think they will perk up in the ground.
My dream is security-light-blocking columnar evergreens all around the front garden edge. Most of the Ilex ‘Sky Pencil’ that I originally planted either languished or died, and when we first moved in, the security lights that are the bane of my north view were not there. It has been a challenge to change the garden design, which was originally supposed to be a flowery “gift to the street”, to a light-blocking wall of green. It is all the fault of whoever invented the modern bright white LED light bulbs that have replaced the ambient softer lights that people used to use.
Our town’s street lights used to have a pale amber glow till a few years back they were replaced with painfully glaring white. It’s a problem of modern civilization and it is not healthy for humans and other living things.
My weeding mission today was supposed to be this horrible area in the back garden…
…but it felt too darn cold to weed. For one enthusiastic moment, I almost got the chain saw and headed south to make paths in the willow grove. However, Allan was installing the two new boat shapes….
…and after he installed the south one, painted green (right)….
….he took down the blue temporary view-blocking blanket from the fence…
….and I found that I still needed one more boat shape to give me the complete stop-the-eye barrier that I had imagined.
I had permission from Alicia to plant a new tree or shrub on her property, one that would reach only fifteen feet tall and no taller, where a tall tree whose branches overhung her roof had been cut down last year. That particular maple tree (with small leaves that were great for my leaf mold bin) had made a soft backdrop to my view. But waiting for a plant to grow to fifteen feet to give me something green and soothing for my window view would take too long. A green boat shape is instant. This is a gardening lesson I learned in several articles by Ann Lovejoy, including this one.
My distress today at having to order delivery of another sheet of plywood was brief. Unbeknownst to me, Allan had ordered extras because he had disagreed with me that two boat shapes would prove to be enough when the blanket came down, and he was right.
He cut out another shape…
…and I painted one side of it. I hoped it would dry in time to get it installed today, and I’d paint the other side when it was up. Meanwhile, Allan put up the north new boat shape. Instead of using light blocking landscape fabric pieces in between, he decided to do something nicer looking with the matching plywood scraps reinstalled and then painted black.
Years ago, I read an excellent gardening book called The Inward Garden by Julie Moir Messervy. It says that each of us has a gardening archetype, perhaps related to gardens of our childhood. Some people like a promontory where they overlook a view, and some like a cave. I am the cave sort, with the obsessive desire for my view to be blocked in every direction except for one sight line to the port. (I just learned she has written more books since then. I am thrilled.)
While waiting for paint to dry, I remembered two containers that I wanted to find a place for and plant with strawberries. I don’t know why, but doing so took the whole rest of the gardening day.
My only excuses are that I changed my mind about moving an area of plant sale plants from in front of the greenhouse….after I had moved half of them. I then realized that space is just too handy for plants that I have just potted up.
Then I thought I would put the two containers, old filing cabinet drawers, on boards balanced between the fish totes. We try to repurpose all sorts of things for reasons of frugality and non-consumption, which can result in a junky look, and having the drawers showing above the totes looked horrifyingly junky. So I used milk crates and cement chunks to raise them up between fish totes but not sticking up above. Time ticked away while I found crates and chunks.
To get the drawers in place between totes, I had to move a tote that wasn’t lined up quite right. After taking the heaviest pieces of hugelkultur wood out of the bottom of the tote which, fortunately, did not have soil yet, I could not budge it. I struggled with it for half an hour before asking Allan for help. He had it shifted within five minutes.
After all that time, getting two drawers in place and filling them with potting soil and strawberry starts resulted in this, which is not too bad. If the strawberries do not thrive, I will use the drawers for growing lettuces.
By then, it was too cold and close to dusk for the installation of the final boat shape. The project will continue for a third day, tomorrow. If it were not for Allan’s carpentry abilities, I would have somehow banged six sheets of plain plywood into place and it wouldn’t have been as good (or as quirky) as the boat shapes. I appreciate his devoting three afternoons to this even though he doesn’t share my obsession with turning the garden into a cave.
Other than creating my cave, the boat shapes also hide from my nice neighbors the wonky plant sale tables and boards, the plastic kitchen compost bin, a collection of buckets and piles of unpotted plants and other assorted junkiness and make for a private nook at the working heart of the garden, the compost bins!
Here is a photo of Skooter from our neighbors three doors west, where it turns out Skooter has been visiting their partially enclosed porch.
We try to keep him in at night, but sometimes he does not come home. When we first met him at a gardening job, he had moved into our client’s house from next door, so this is not new behavior. Fortunately, our neighbors three doors down are delighted with his visit, so far.
I just moved my contorted filbert. I do like the way that is pruned and will keep this in mind. Would that affect the limbs you’d want to cut for arrangements?
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I mostly just cut a few branches a year that are going sidewalks onto the paths. Plus a lot of the stuff I cut off on this day were kind of brittle, not really sure they are salvageable for decor.
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Lots of work for you even in the winter! Love those boat shapes. Finally, can’t resist wish you a happy Inauguration Day. I have been moved to tears more than once today.
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I got up early (for me) and wept with joy through many of the inaugurations highlights. O happy day! We will have e a celebratory campfire this afternoon!
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Oh, yes! We had drinks at noon, something we never do.
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It would have been 9AM drinks for us, a bit too early. 😀
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Indeed it would have! Noon seemed pretty darned early.
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Watched part of the inauguration – it was moving, and oh what a relief.Glad to see the tail end of a horrible administration for your country.
My garden is about as long as yours, but only half as wide. All my plantings for privacy – primarily due to the neighbours building massive houses, have resulted in way too much shade. I love your plywood boat silhouettes, a good solution to when fencing cannot go above six feet. But art installations can!
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I think the boat cut-outs are a very innovative solution to the light pollution. I can definitely empathize as my next-door neighbors keeps every light on inside and outside of her house, sometimes even during the day. Her light in my garden/bedroom is blocked by lattice I had put up. (Light pollution has a big effect on lightning bugs.)
The pruned filbert looks terrific. What a difference.
Did you hear Lady Gaga sing? Wow. I cried. SO VERY HAPPY and relieved we have a change of administration.
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It reminds me of the old Smiths song, “There is a light that never goes out.” Totally different feeling when it is a glaring white light that gives me migraines and requires paper tapes to my north window to block it on a cloud day.
I cried during Lady Gaga and even Garth Brooks. Heck, I even cried when that firefighter did the pledge with sign language. It was so emotional. Such a relief.
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