19 January: more on the new path

Tuesday, 19 January 2021

At home

After a good seven and half hours of sleep and the eye drop routine with Skooter, and after breakfast and news reading, I was ready to garden at noon.

Again, the day was too cold for comfortable weeding, and I wanted to work on my willow grove project anyway.

Allan started his day by building some useful shelves at the back of the garage annex. This should keep things from falling on the floor.

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(my brilliant idea, his brilliant implementation)

Faerie very much wanted to come out of the south Catio and help me in the willow grove.

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I would love to show her the garden…but she is so tiny. I could only take her on a garden walk on a day when I don’t have a distracting project to do. And once she has been outside the Catio, her desire to escape will be even fiercer.

In the willow grove outside the south fence, I cut up the pile of holly from Sunday into branches and trunks to dry for a campfire and filled a wheelbarrow with leaves and twigs….

Above: looking north over a heaped up wheelbarrow

…..and managed to get that wheelbarrow load into the wheelie bin. I took a tarp back to the grove and piled another batch of holly twigs and leaves onto it for next week’s wheelie bin and then started pulling ivy.

Having finished the shelves, Allan came to the willows grove with the chainsaw and joined in the fun. After I asked him to cut five small holly trunks, he became interested and found much more to cut.

Some photos from before and some from today show the progress.

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Above: from inside the south fence with a full swale of rain before, in December, and after, today

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Above: in December, looking south

today, with lower branch cut. The large building to the left is At the Helm Hotel.

Some befores and afters of the path to the new beach:

Sunday

Sunday

Today (one of several piles of dry campfire kindling is to the left)

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In the middle of the grove, above: December and today looking west

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Above: Last week and today outside the south fence; the green in the middle of the after is a pile of cut holly to sort out.

I have several piles to deal with: dry twiggy branches to cut for kindling, holly branches to dry for a future campfire, holly twigs for the wheelie bin, mixed holly to sort through for twigs vs branches, and kindling already small enough to use. But even with that bit of a mess, I’m pleased with the results. There is a new frog watching beach now accessible, which is where the river beach used to be before the port was built up on full. Our property was once riverfront.

This article describes how the properties on the south side of Lake Street went from riverfront to two blocks from the water; see the section “Improving the Port, 1950s and 1960s”.

Before the port was built on fill…and now (the arrow points to our street):

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It still somehow feels like riverfront in the willows grove and reminds me of childhood camping at Nason Creek.

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frogwallow

Looking west: just some ivy pulling and pile sorting to do here.

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I ran out of steam at four PM before pulling this ivy.

We still left some salmonberry for the hummingbirds; the flowers are their first native plant food. And we left some willow wildness….

A falling willow tree tears instead of snapping.

To the east, we will leave the willows full of broken and rotting wood for critters. Those are stacks of crab pots out on the parking lot.

One more day of ivy pulling and I can call this project done for now. I think tomorrow, Inauguration Day, might call for a celebratory afternoon campfire lunch.

Other than tidying up and pulling ivy, I will leave all the long grasses for frogs. I’d like to plant some more ferns out here and other deer resistant shade treasures. It could use some better soil but it would be a long haul to mulch. Even just as it is now, I am very well chuffed with this project.