22 April: reunion after almost 30 years

Thursday, 22 April 2021

At home

We had visitors in the late morning and talked for three hours. Diane came from the Seattle area with her good friend Jane. The last time I saw Diane was in 1992. We had connected on Facebook last year but the pandemic had kept her from visiting. Now that we are all vaxxed, we were able to catch up (still outdoors and with some fairly good social distancing, no hugs!)

Jane and Diane

Diane and her spouse Jim and I had met at an anti-war protest in 1991. Today, she and Allan discovered that he had gone to high school with Jim and they found Jim’s photo in his old annuals.

Diane is an avid gardener, too, who runs a Facebook group called Cascadia Gardeners. So of course we toured every inch of the garden.

The wayback sit spot

We reminisced about the homelessness project that we were involved with in 1991. The Arion Court has remained low income housing to this day and Diane has continued to be an advocate for the homeless. She brought me the bell that one of our late friends, Terry, used to wear. It is now a poignant reminder hanging on our sun porch.

Next time, she promised to bring Jim. We think he and Allan would have a lot in common!

After a good, long and satisfying visit, Jane and Diane departed to have an outdoor lunch at Salt Pub. “Best ever mac and cheese,” Diane said later.

Allan turned to a small painting project…

…while I started planting my table full of ladies in waiting. It happened that Allan had asked when the table, which is one he likes to use outside the porch of his shop, would be empty.

Just as I started planting, he came outside again with Zinc wearing the new cat harness.

I said that if he wanted the table cleared, he mustn’t distract me with an exciting cat adventure.

The adventure was short lived because Zinc started to back right out of the harness and was hustled back indoors. Allan then filled up all of the green jugs with rain water , getting all our rain barrels emptied so that they can fill again when blessed rain returns on Friday.

I planted till the end of the day. Skooter snoozed as I passed by him multiple times.

The rest of this post is just a record of the plants that got planted today.

I replaced my Zalusianskya ‘Midnight Candy’ with the new one. The old one looks pretty tired.

It has a powerfully sweet nighttime fragrance.

Heleniums are one of my favorites. Carol Klein describes them as a plant with centers that look like “velvet doorknobs”. I added several to my collection: Butter Pat, Tijuana Brass, Kugelsonne, Rotgold, mostly from Joy Creek Nursery and Digging Dog. So far, they just look like this.

In order to fit one the heleniums into the perfect spot, Rudbeckia maxima had to move to a new spot.

I was thrilled to get two new candelabra primula from Secret Garden Growers.

They will look good along my winter stream/summer path if there is enough moisture here in summer. I’ll divide them to make more after they have bloomed.

I am trying another Jack in the pulpit in the same area even though I’ve never had luck with them before.

Wish me luck.

The new beds in the Bogsy Wood and wayback corner got some exciting new plants.

Epimedium ‘Royal Dress’

Dryopteris ‘The King’

I added two brunneras, ‘Diane’s Gold’ and ‘Alexander’s Great.’

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A variegated Iris ensata will go in one of the water boxes, after some more plants (cannas, waiting for warmer weather) go in there to keep it from falling over.

A new penstemon had confusing tags.

Two new grasses: Panicum ‘Shenandoah’ and Schizachyrium ‘Standing Ovation’ went into the center bed. None of them are photogenic yet, but they will be. One more grass went into the west bed, near another Molina grass. This example of good catalog writing from Digging Dog shows why I succumb to enticing plants.

Also in the west bed…

Two more plants wait to be put in containers tomorrow….a Cuphea ‘Copper Cricket’…

And a very cool geranium Ann grew from seed.

After putting two small plants in one of the fish totes to size up a bit before planting, I hobbled indoors, quite tired but satisfied with the day’s accomplishments. Planting is not my favorite thing. I managed to admire a couple of tulips on the way.