The north wind was fierce and cold. I figured out three jobs we could do that were the least exposed to the gale.
Boreas Inn
Susie had asked us to rake pine needles out of the garden beds near the beach pine that grows next to the hut tub room. We also weeded and put a nice edge on the long bed with the half moon edger.
Allan weeded and raked the round bed. The bearded Iris are silly there in the full shade. I took some out…they have been there since before my time.
I checked on the sweet peas. The little plants I grew in a cold frame look good on the south fence…
….but in the north fence are decimated by snails or slugs even though I applied Sluggo when planting. The little plants might revive, and there are seeds planted, also.
The Garden Suite bed
I cut back the sword ferns too early, really, on the other side of the Garden Suite area. It is easiest to shear the ferns when I am ahead of the unfurling croziers, but our cold springtime has slowed them down.
croziers still tightly furled
I did a bit of weeding in the lawn beds….
…while Allan dumped debris and loaded the pine needles. I hear they are good for mulching strawberries.
On the way south, we looked at the new garden bed, our last planting project in Long Beach town.
We had meant to do some pruning at Patti’s. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to bring my antibiotic that I must take at three thirty, so we went home. Fortunately, we have a job across the street from home! And better yet, the garden areas there are protected from the bitter cold north wind that was gusting at over 20 mph.
J Crew Cottage
It was time for a thorough, nit picky weeding.
I gave up on most of the moss, which goes back to the original planting by a previous owner in 2011 and has been in a decline.
Allan did a river rock area while I did the pretty part of the garden.
Even though the garden was sheltered, we were glad to finish our day and join the cats in the comfort of indoors.
I had the better camera in my pocket on this day of puttering in the garden.
Corylopsis pauciflora
so hard to capture white flowers The always interesting Danger Tree snag. I’m going to make a planter of the broken urn. Meianthemum in the willow grove
Pulmonaria
Schefflera and a small variegated pieris helleborePink muscari I love the new path Stages of bulbs Oh joy, this hellebore came back from an iffy transplanting job. I desperaty need to spend a day just digging the lesser celandine Allan’s garden Must move some podophyllum away from this precious trillium. Christmas gift from Allan
With beautiful weather, I got outside just after noon with all sorts of plans. (Before that, I sleep, have breakfast, read the news, email, etc.). The first thing I did is put some decorative indoor objects in a wheelbarrow. It will reduce house clutter if more things can live in the garden springtime through autumn. I also had two buckets of moss that Allan had scraped from the sidewalk.
I started by digging, dividing, and replanting a short ornamental grass, Miscanthus ‘Gold Bar’, so its original home can have a taller grass, and then offloaded a big tarp of escallonia clippings from the CoHo Charters job. This solved the mystery of why I have lava rocks in my compost bins every year. They get raked up with the CoHo clippings. Not a bad thing! Good green clippings on bin three:
Then I remembered I wanted to plant some of my new sort-of-alpine-plants in two wooden boxes, inspired by Beechgrove Garden. (“Sort of” because the plants are just some new dianthus, not anything rare or special in the alpine plant world. I need to join the North American Rock Garden Society and stop being frugal about it.) I did not get a before photo, but the boxes sat on these blue chairs just for the winter. I’d planted some old salad greens seeds in them to no effect.
After I started the planting, I remembered my idea of making a crevice garden in a box. But I had no thin rocks. Then I had the brainstorm of doing a crevice garden with the broken tops of inferior terra cotta pots. Then I decided they could not stay on the chairs because they did not fit right, and I have boxes of echeverrias and such that fit perfectly in the summer. Then I had to make two pillars at the opposite sit spot on the other side of the center bed, removing two broken down terracotta pots and building columns with bricks on top of two round pavers that had kept weeds out of the defunct round pots. Ideally, I would have used rectangular pavers and concrete blocks. Then I asked Allan to help me move the two boxes (which I could have done first by emptying them out, if every step of the project had not been spontaneous). Then came perfection and the level for the brick columns.
The semi final result:
Must get more alpine style plants.
The wooden box project had taken three hours.
I returned to my original project and took decorative pieces into the garden. Three little houses will go on the big Bogsy Wood plant table. (With a windstorm coming tomorrow, they were stored under it after I played with them for awhile.)
I really would not sell ivy (Hedera helix is a noxious weed here).An idea from Beechgrove: A gardener with outdoor model trains used a broken watering can as a train tunnel set into a miniature hillside.
I am sure some people will think the tablescape is all too twee.
I dumped the moss in the salmonberry tunnel and tramped it down.
I pondered what I could plant in the deep shade of the former Bogsy sit spot….
….and admired how Allan had leveled the round table in the new corner sit spot.
I got one more plant into the ground in the front garden.
Allan fixed a leaky water bin.
He worked on some signage for the boatyard but now thinks he has to redo them with the board pieces painted white.
This, from the book NonviolentCommunication, is why we don’t want signs with a “don’t” in them.
What didn’t get done today:
Branches fell again in my twig and branch fence….
…but a transplanted fern is unfurling and I like the wall of fish totes next door.
I didn’t finish my meander line path yet onto Alicia’s property.
I am worried I have not heard the spring peepers and wonder if some chemical made its way into the storm water ditch.
That looks a bit off…but maybe it’s frog spawn? Most of the water looks clean.
I didn’t find boards to use on these chairs. My temporary fix is not working.
Delegating to Allan….
Plants did not get planted and there is so much weeding to do.
I had gotten the long clippers out to trim plants in the pond but did not get around to it….
I did manage to dig up some brown sand to fill in around some pond edge sarracenias, after learning on Beechgrove that they don’t like to sit in just water.
I got the canoe pond trimmed up.
the trimmings, and the reason why I won’t plant veg in the Catio barrels this year:
Today I felt an urgent and aching desire to be retired (at least from all but the port gardens) just to spend my life in my own garden.
Our mission today was to retrieve the sidewalk from rugosa roses, escallonias, and an old buddleia. It’s a shame that plants have to follow rules set by city government, but there you have it. I got the letter from the city at my old house more than once.
We managed to regain the sidewalk and still keep the privacy of the secret garden. We could help bring the buddleia and escallonia lower and still keep that sense of enclosure, but we’re working on getting the most necessary things done. I simply adore the look of the old fence. However, it is so fragile that it will be replaced sooner rather than later.
Whole working, I heard an exceptionally loud cat meow and investigated to find its source.
He’s 15 years old! Beautiful hellebores in a dreamy garden
We had time to go to the dump to offload the debris, which Allan had managed to all fit into our little trailer. It was not easy to get it out of the trailer.
Next to us, at the dump….
Now that’s a stumpery!
At home
Allan found the energy to shovel some moss off of our own sidewalk.
I had been having health anxieties all day and had only four hours of sleep in the night and so I checked on the greenhouses and then sat myself down in my comfy chair to watch a few episodes of BeechgroveGarden.
The Grey Cats are often found on Allan’s comfy chair.
Later in the evening, while looking to make sure that the new episode of Gardeners’ World was awaiting us, I was amazed to find that the great streaming channel Britibox has added several brilliant gardening shows, including Edible Garden with Alyse Fowler and Lifein a Cottage Garden with Carol Klein, both of which I had only seen in blurry uploaded online videos.
And….
How about that! I wish BritBox had the 2019 season of Beechgrove, as I haven’t been able to find all the episodes online. (HDClump has it but some of the episodes are mixed up with 2016.) BritBox starts with 2020, the lockdown season with presenters broadcasting from their private gardens and with flashbacks of garden tours from previous seasons. By 2020, my favourite presenter, the droll and darling and delightful Jim McColl…
…had retired at age 80. I will continue to miss him as the show moves on to 2021.
Here are some spring flowers that did not make it into yesterday’s blog, partly to make the timeline run two days behind so I have time to write and some cushion space for evenings when something might go wrong. I only wish I’d used the best camera instead of the little pocketcam.
At the J Crew Cottage:
at home after work:
Robins
The wind blew down the wool that I hung up to see if birds would like it for nests. The birds seem to have no interest whatsoever in woolly nests, and I am sure they know what is best for them.
the blue of pulmonaria in the foreground
I heard lots of forklift action from the neighboring gear shed in the morning. In the evening, I saw a new privacy wall of red and white Jessie’s fish totes on their SW corner, outside of my new sit spot. It will probably be there all summer, and I love it.
Earlier on Wednesday, 24 March 2021
A personal news item that I skipped is that on a rainy, cold Wednesday, we went grocery shopping for the first time in slightly over a year. I needed a couple of things related to my medical appointment right away: grapes and apples, which are good fruits to eat for the low calcium food regimen I need to follow during my course of antibiotics. It was okay at Sid’s Market in Seaview, pretty quiet in the afternoon and everyone wearing masks and pretty good social distancing. We bought two grocery carts full of food.
But it made this article from The Atlantic ring so true. I’d found it interesting but didn’t think it would be apply to me:
“A friend of mine recently confessed that the morning routine he’d comfortably maintained for a decade—wake up before 7, shower, dress, get on the subway—now feels unimaginable on a literal level: He cannot put himself back there. Another has forgotten how to tie a tie. A co-worker isn’t sure her toddler remembers what it’s like to go shopping in a store.”
I lost track of Allan and his cart toward the end of the shopping spree and found him in the check out line…and I excused myself to the man who was standing well back with a few items, thinking he would soon be next, and barged in front of him saying I was with Allan and needed to check out with him, instead of waiting behind the waiting man as I should have and always would have before. I felt terrible right away (he just quietly went to a different line). I had totally forgotten how lines work. Then I just stood by the check stand. I couldn’t remember for at least fifteen long seconds that you take your groceries out of the cart and put them on the moving belt. It all seemed completely foreign, and I still feel bad about cutting in line.
Tomorrow (Friday), if all goes well, we can do that pruning job at Shell Cottage.
I began my day at the hospital getting routine blood tests, having decided that at age 66, I should be more of a grown up about my health. Meanwhile, Allan dug up the ornamental grass that, for reasons I can’t remember, was planted (by us, I assume) next to the sidewalk at the community building.
looks much better and the hardy fuchsia will show better
Port of Ilwaco
Allan sheared the escallonias at CoHo charters, starting with the north side, where it grows between Coho and the new (but not yet opened) Ilwaco Bakery.
Meanwhile, I planted poppy seeds (mostly assorted colorful California poppies) in the eastern curbside bed and on down to the David Jensen office curbside bed. I did only light weeding of big dandelions and the areas where I was planting seeds. We will do a thorough and obsessive weeding next week, I hope. I’ll be able to tell where I planted seeds by the tidiest patches. I enjoyed spring flowers while planting.
The CoHo lava rockscape
When went home to dump off the first load of escallonia clippings, I went across the street to spray the J Crew Cottage roses for aphids. I’m saving photos of their spring flowers for tomorrow’s post, an extra post because this blog is breathing too hard down my neck when I write on the same day!
We returned to the port. This time, Allan dropped me at the west end and I worked my way east with my poppy seeds, enabling me to mostly keep my back or side to the sun, which I am supposed to avoid for ten days (it interacts with an antibiotic to make a sunburn type reaction more likely).
Photos from my poppy planting journey. Not all the beds got them, and I’ve saved pastel and pink seeds for Diane’s garden and an assorted selection for the boatyard. By the way, it would have probably been better to plant them earlier in the year, something I have never managed to do.
At Time Enough Books:
A carpet of Armeria (sea thrift)
Oops, we forgot to shear the santolinas at the port office curbside garden. It will have to wait till next week.
I deadheaded on the south side of the port office. Across the lawn, the tide was low.
I also realized I’d forgotten to prune a sword fern and to weed behind the port office. I weeded, but the fern must wait.
More flowers along the way…
We had not cut down the santolinas in the drive over garden either….
….but that was on purpose because the shorter the plants are, the more they get driven over in its location between two big parking areas.
Meanwhile, Allan had sheared the escallonia on the south side of CoHo Charters and had done some weeding and lavender shearing as well.
Now the charter motel guests have their view back.
We got it all done, except for unloading debris, by five. I look forward to a painstaking weeding of all the curbside gardens and the boatyard next week, at which time I’ll plant some belated poppy seeds at the boatyard. We also must return to Diane’s garden for more poppy planting that we were unable to do this week due to the roofing project being in the garden zone there.
The work board tonight:
Tomorrow, some more spring flowers from today at the Js’ and at home.
Today’s mission was to plant sweet peas. I thought I might need a few more seeds. I had ordered way fewer this year because of not having Long Beach anymore, and now I wish I had ordered more special ones. I was able to get a Spencer mix and Royal Family mix at The Planter Box garden center to fill in among the special ones, which are Saltwater Taffy Swirls, Pastel Sunset, and Perfume Delight mixes. Next year, I am going to spend more on sweet peas!
At The Planter Box:
Also, bunnies!
Diane’s garden:
We swung across Cranberry Road and down to Diane’s. We always slow down to see if we could pull into the parking area or if it’s so crowded with other vehicles that we need to park next door at the Red Barn. Today we drove onward to the barn because there was no room for us!
Diane was getting a new roof!
We wheelbarrowed our supplies along the road back to Diane’s roadside garden. There would be no planting of poppies in and around the septic vault garden because the ground back there was piled high with roofing supplies. Poppy seeding will mean a return trip next week.
I planted sweet pea plants, started last fall and overwintered in a cold frame per Monty Don, alternating with seeds. Look how well rooted they are! Two per pot which easily separated.
I am well chuffed and I really must order some more sweet pea seeds so I can try the same method for next year. I will soon learn if I have planted them out too soon (I did harden them off) and next year, I will use deeper pots.
The roofer employee was rolling a magnetic device over the lawn to pick up any stray nails. I talked to the owner of the very well-reputed new business, Integrity Construction, about whether an even flatter roofed manufactured home like our 1978 model could have a metal roof like Diane was getting, and he said yes, so we might be getting a bid from them one of these years. They looked to me like the kind of business who would not trample the garden.
The Red Barn
After Diane’s garden, we filled ten buckets from the horse manure pile. It’s not my ideal mulch, being so weedy, but I desperately need some free mulch for a couple of spots at the port. I found a well rotted area to dig in.
Allan, who took all the photos today because planting seeds completely occupies my brain, liked the look of these colorful bait pots. (Crab fishing supplies are stored and worked on in one of the barns.)
In a telephoto from the Red Barn, the roofing crew look like they were closely enclosed by evergreens.
Port of Ilwaco
We applied the mulch in a couple of low spots. Allan raked it out and did some weeding while I planted some sweet pea seeds in a few areas along the fence that might be clear enough for them to grow. I usually have just minimal sweet pea success at the boatyard, but enough to make the effort worthwhile.
Clearing a spot for sweet peas
We put some horse poo mulch at one of the port curbside gardens where vigorous weeding had left uneven ground…
….and moved some pink yarrow down to the Powell Gallery curbside bed. We also planted a couple of hebes that I had propagated and had intended for Diane’s septic vault garden. There are more where they came from.
Hebe baby and Anemone blanda
Mowing
While I planted my own sweet peas, Allan mowed at the J Crew Cottage…
Bright new rose foliage
…and Alicia’s front lawn…
…and then our lawn, where he mulched up some sword ferns for my compost bins.
I got my sweet pea plants and seeds planted, enabling some erasure from the work board.
Today, a belated birthday present from Allan arrived, something I’ve wanted for a long time: metal allium decorations.
I like them a lot. He would also like me to point out that over the course of the day, he snagged me a bucket of rocks as another belated gift.
The work board tonight:
I’m surprised we got as much done as we did because my day began with another urgent care appointment at the medical clinic as my Problem seemed to be not resolving. This time, I got to see the new doctor who will be my primary care provider, three weeks before what was supposed to be our first proper appointment. I told her that so far, four medical professionals (two doctors, a nurse, and a physician’s assistant) had gently poopooed my thoughts about not having a spider bite, especially when I invoked what I had read on Dr Google. (Doctors don’t like that, usually.) My new doctor, when I said I had a googled theory, asked, “What did Dr Google say?” And when I told her, she said, “Dr. Google is right; that is not a spider bite.” She’s optimistic about a cure, and because she’s funny, I am no longer dreading our first proper appointment. So with a rather long emergency appointment and then a trip to the pharmacy for a longer course of the correct antibiotic this time (it is to be hoped!), I was amazed we got all the poppy seeds in and the bit of mulching done and some mowing to boot. It is not ideal to take two courses of antibiotics. I guess the moral is to argue harder with your doctors. Or that three agreeing medical opinions are not always the right ones. Now for ten days of being supposed to stay out of daylight….which isn’t going to happen. The pharmacist reassured me that a hat and long sleeves and gloves and slathers of sunscreen will work.
Blogging is weird. I feel compelled to not skip over such an important part of the day and to be so accurate and truthful that I rarely even alter the timeline of what we did at a job even if it would make the narrative flow more smoothly. (Like If we go to one job, then another, then back to the first one.) Thus, even though I won’t reveal every personal detail, I can’t skip over an important part of the day out.
We were surprised by clear weather. I didn’t have my camera with me when I went out back, so just visualize the wheelbarrows a third full of water in 24 hours! Our friends Mary and Denny had texted that they’d like to stop by with birthday presents. While we waited for them, Allan got the vehicle and trailer ready for work and I picked them a nice bunch of narcissi. Mary and I walked all around the garden, even unto the willow grove project, while Allan and Denny chatted about Allan and Denny type things. We all talked about what it is like to be retired or semi retired; they retired from managing Klipsan Beach Cottages a couple of years ago, at which time they were our longest-term gardening clients. We’d see them more often were they not now living in the town of Naselle, to the northeast off the peninsula, hardly any further away than Klipsan Beach Cottages but not on our daily rounds.
After they departed, we left to begin this week’s mission, the planting of poppy and sweet pea seeds.
The Depot Restaurant
….got a quick check up but no seeds in its already full garden bed. Although the bed looks like it has room, perennials will soon enough fill it in.
Patti’s garden
Stella got her first biscuit from us of the year…
…and Patti got a bouquet of narcissi.
I planted sweet peas, with a twist this year. I grew some from seed planted in autumn, brought them through winter in a cold frame as advised by Monty Don, and planted the little plants, which were very well rooted. I put seeds in between in case it doesn’t work out. I’m saving two of the three fence sides for morning glories because they were fabulous last year.
Patti loves the early tulips.
Meanwhile, Allan trimmed sword ferns on the shady side of the driveway.
Boreas Inn
I planted lots of different poppies and California poppies and sweet pea starts and seeds. It was easy along the simple fence on the south side of the yard.
The Garden Suite garden fence, however, is anathema to me with its staggered planks that make weeds from next door so hard to remove. All fences should have a straight across bottom! You can see it in Allan’s photos of where he dug out a clump of montbretia for me.
It was wonderful to get that orange montbretia clump out at last. I have a wee Clematis ‘Rooguchi’ next to it that I don’t want to be swamped, and it gave me more room for sweet peas.
Allan was pleased to rescue a narcissus bulb from the long grass and get it back into a garden bed. That’s a plant the deer reliably leave alone.
He also did more dig outs. Two green santolina that never got cut back during the year or two when we did not work here looked irredeemably woody. One came out and will be replaced. As an experiment, Allan cut the other one back hard.
befores and afters:
The rescued narcissus is next to the Buddha.
He lifted a lavender and a gaura that were infested with weed grass, cleaned them up and replanted them. It had to be done.
I hope those two plants are in a forgiving mood.
His work was harder physically but mine, juggling seed packets, was harder mentally. I had to take refuge from a rain squall at one point to keep my seeds from getting wet. Fortunately, we have the Dark Sky app that assured me it would be dry again in 8 minutes.
The deer make gardening here difficult. They even ate elephant garlic.
Port of Ilwaco
As we often do, we drove past the port gardens on our way home and had a moment of tulip appreciation when Allan hopped out to pick up a piece of trash from a curbside bed.
I think we will get one more day before heavy rain returns. I hope to get the rest of the sweet peas planted on Tuesday.
Yesterday was a rainy and windy day, good for watching many the episode of Beechgrove Garden, a Scottish show with which I am so obsessed at the moment that I have almost stopped reading books….except for a chapter of Monty Don’s new book at bedtime. You can find seasons 2015 through 2020 at HDClump.com. The weather was so blustery that an Ilwaco neighborhood a couple of miles east of us actually had a small tornado. It took out a fence and a window. I was so glad it didn’t land in my garden or on our flimsy house.
Today, some decent looking weather inspired me to get out the big Fiskars shovel with the goal of finishing the digging out of my meander line path that crosses over into our neighbor Alicia’s lot. I then remembered one shrub that I need to move, a columnar golden barberry that has gotten buried under shrubs. I resolved to do that first. I got this far, with the Root Slayer shovel…
….when I decided it would help if I fetched Allan, so one of us could hold branches back whilst the other accomplished the final dig out from the back. Just when I tracked him down in his shop, the skies opened with rain.
Two episodes of Beechgrove later (the 29 minute long episodes move along at a smart clip, always including a visit to a wonderful Scottish garden), Allan said he wanted to dig out the shrub all by himself. So he did.
As I left the house a bit later, I realized I had been hearing sirens for awhile, and I saw not one but two LifeFlight helicopters heading to the nearby hospital. You can just see it below, over Allan’s dark green shed.
Just a blurry dot in the misty, rainy sky, but quite noisy to the ear and a harbinger of someone having a terrible day.
I found the barberry loaded into a wheelbarrow and took it across the garden to plant on the south end of the east side border, which has two other columnar barberries, one also golden and one the ‘Orange Rocket’, which is not as columnar as it sounds like it should be.
I would like to have spent time digging out the accursed patch of lesser celandine (which I attack every year, apparently to no avail) and some buttercups, had the wind not kicked up and rain begun again. I took a quick turn around the garden…
I had thought of trying to straighten the table in the new sit spot were it not for the wind and the fact that the metal path was swamped again.
Later, Allan told me he had gone in there himself and straightened up the table (a heavy old lawn roller turned on end).
The rain and wind drove me back indoors to Beechgrove.
Allan had made faux deviled eggs with a hard boiled egg and a mustard and mayonnaise swirl.
I had some Earl Grey tea…didn’t really deserve a Builders for planting one shrub.
The sirens and life flight helicopters had continued all during my gardening.
I found out the from local newspaper that three people, tourists from Idaho, were transported to Portland hospitals after six were injured during a one car stunt driving rollover on the beach (making “donuts” in the sand, meaning driving in tight circles, not legal on the beach which is, most unfortunately, a designated state highway with pretty much unheeded highway rules. The driver also ignored the 25 mile an hour rarely enforced speed limit). Of the six people in the vehicle, four of them children, only the driver is in critical condition.
Life Flight helicopters will arrive at our little hospital and wait to learn if someone needs transport. Rural and small town folks can buy a reasonably priced annual membership which could save the hundreds (maybe over a thousand) dollars that an uninsured emergency helicopter transport would cost. When my former spouse, Robert, had a heart attack, the helicopter arrived and waited on the landing pad by the hospital till it was ascertained that he’d be ok to stay at our local hospital. It was terribly suspenseful as I worried about what to do about our two dogs if he was flown out, but at least I knew we had a membership. (The two block ambulance ride to the hospital was not covered by our insurance.)
Photo from Life Flight website
The helicopters fly over our house (a few blocks from the hospital) with alarming frequency and every time, I think about how someone is having a terrible day and, even though I am not a spiritual person, my well wishes are similar to a prayer. If I am outside gardening, I stop and look up respectfully as the copter passes over.
I think a couple of last minute photo glitches (like empty boxes or duplicates) might be visible in today’s blog. A last minute glitch that I am too tired to spend any more time trying to fix. I think all the photos are here, though.
To Surfside and back
We drove to the south end of the Surfside neighborhood, about half an hour north on the Peninsula, for a tax preparation meeting with our accountant. I thought about how different life is now being half retired. Before, I would have been so relieved that it was raining, because I would have been behind on work as always and feeling the pressure. Now I was just glad of the rain so I didn’t miss a good day in my garden.
Our accountant had also been vaccinated, so we sat in her office, maskless, in a large airy space. It felt odd after a year of not being into a building other than our house, except for the vax appointments and three unfortunate recent visits to the hospital (all better now). I don’t think I want to be indoors with people yet except when absolutely necessary. Not till the cases stop rising here on the peninsula…and they are rising again. Mission accomplished, though.
Here’s some of what we saw on our excursion.
Entering Long Beach, I was enormously pleased to see new banners at the south entry to downtown…
…so much friendlier than the fierce looking, red white and blue background, eagle banners that were there for years. I wish this had happened while I worked there, because the angry eagles annoyed me every time I saw them. We do have a big population of bald eagles here, but it didn’t feel as if nature appreciation was the message behind the eagle banners.
Here is the new bed we planted up last fall on the east side of Fifth Street Park.
Someone has put soap in the waterfall pond. Allan says it has been there since last week when he drove up to the bank.
We stopped at The Planter Box where I redeemed my gift certificate from Our Kathleen for the perfect birthday gift.
Some new plants on offer:
And some jellyfish garden decor…Teresa says they are selling fast.
In Ocean Park, we took a wee detour to admire the sweeps of narcissi along Bay Avenue…
..and had a roadside view of “our” old garden at Eric Wiegardt’s art gallery, now cared for by his brother, Todd.
I must remember to text Todd and tell him that the Stipa gigantea that Allan cut down low at the Ilwaco post office has come back so beautifully that I now think my advice to just comb it out was wrong!
When we got home, we found that Scott and Tony had dropped off a large shrub; they had offered it but had not known what it was, and I am sure it is a lilac. I don’t have room for it, so I found a home for it the next day with Megan, the new Long Beach gardener. It’s so big that it might be a challenge to lift it up into her truck!
In the evening, I watched a wonderful zoom presentation from the Portland chapter of the American Rhododendron Society, all about the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle. I added almost every plant shown to my Plants of Desire list and wished fervently that I was young enough to have time to acquire everything on the list. I learned that British garden designer Dan Pearson (whose gardening books I adore) will be giving the annual lecture via zoom for the Miller garden this September and am very excited to get it on that. Our friends Steve and John of the Bayside Garden are the head honchos of the local ARS this year and I am so grateful to them for alerting me to these monthly lectures.
You can watch the delightful lecture on zoom here.
The Portland chapter of the American Rhododendron Society would love to have you as a member; have a look, here. The ARS website, with members worldwide, is here and do check out the archives of the glorious series of Portland chapter newsletters, here.
Tangly Cottage Gardening 