I had skipped the corner garden of Veterans Field for a couple of weeks of planting time. That was a mistake! It was an embarrassing mess of accursed horsetail and even dandelions. I keep forgetting that the parks and planters need a lot more maintenance than they used to because of going all to weeds last spring and summer. It is also why they are so bare. Many plants had to be removed completely because they got so infested.
How fabulous it is that we could hold off this long on planter watering. Usually it starts a week early if not sooner. And we haven’t had to water the port yet at all.
My rollator makes a great bucket and hose carrier, and I also used it to discreetly fend off tourists who want to get too close to ask for the best location of ice cream and fish and chips in Long Beach. (The answer to the latter is Captain Bob’s Chowder.)
Allan had trouble with his faucet bayonet and had to spend quite some time getting a piece of wood (bark) out it. The first day of watering always has some kind of problem. Speaking of which, the city is supposed to get the tree garden faucets, that haven’t been used for two years, cleaned out and functional; they are in holes in the ground. I had better remind them.
I still get annoyed at how weedy the planters got last year, because I am going to be dealing with the results for three years, if I last that long before retiring, or else someone else will inherit the problem. One year of weeds equals seven years of seeds, or something like that, not to mention all the grass that worked its way into perennials.
I wish I had called the city last summer and said, “I’m getting texts from people saying things like ‘Long Beach is a hot mess!’ What’s going wrong??” I had that vertigo in August, though, so couldn’t have worked anyway.
Love this white silene, and the white narcissi with a tiny little cup.
White camassia Newly planted planter City Crew member Johnny
I put a couple of little penstemons and eryngiums in the bed at Fifth Street Park’s SE quadrant. The cold weather has the baby plants just sitting there not growing much.
NE quadrant, well established (with BadAster, sadly)
I do not like this rose (it is rootstock, with muddy red flowers if any at all, and hangs into traffic)…
…and I don’t want this Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ either. Something to deal with later. Even the crew tried to dig the rose out for me once but it is firmly entrenched way down deep.
We weeded the little popout…
…planted some green santolina and a few more plants in Fifth Street Park west ….
…and were annoyed that whoever pruned the escallonia hedge had chopped and dropped rose canes into the garden (OUCH!)…
(Note endless horsetail nightmare.)
…and pulled bulb foliage out of Minnie Culbertson Park’s little planting and then we were done.
We had to be home by six to zoom another Ilwaco City Council meeting where they kicked the can of the emergency housing “renoviction” crisis at the Beacon RV Park further down the road. Two councilors are doing all they can but are being thwarted. Public comment was again scintillating, but the meeting itself was so confusing that afterwards zoom attendees messaged each other, what the heck just happened?
Allan dig a big clipping of heather that was so far out on the sidewalk that we feared wheelchairs could not get through. He did his best with a plant that does not take well to hard shearing.
Heather Salal
He addressed a few other areas, like the entrance garden to the library.
Brodiaea foliage Shade garden Ramp from street
On the way home, he stopped by Black Lake to see, perhaps wistfully, that other boaters were having fun, or maybe having trouble negotiating the water weeds.
At home
When he returned in the late afternoon, he weeded the good ship Ann Lovejoy for me.
My day, with more exciting plant tags, will come in tomorrow’s post.
I spent a couple of hours moving all plants for my plant sale out of the propagation tables, leaving plants too small to offer and cuttings that had barely taken and plants I want to keep behind to be sorted later.
I had what seemed like many new plants to plant, although it ended up being surprising how quickly the table of new acquisitions thinned out. Plants were mail ordered from Digging Dog, Annie’s Annuals and Perennials, Far Reaches Farm and Secret Garden Growers. I planted for a couple of hours, refusing to be distracted by weeds. Those who really want to see baby plants and plant tags can scroll through the gallery.
Some of these may even have been planted on Sunday, which was another planting day.
Some tags must stand alone but trust me, the plants are there.
Around four o clock we had an influx of company: Scott and Tony and Debbie and her sisters.
Then it was back to planting till almost dark. I am so busy right now that I cannot write more about this very pleasant day.
We weeded the port gardens from CoHo Charters to the west end, skipping the east bed because we did not have time for all, and because wasn’t too awfully bad. While I was checking on the east end to see if we could get away with skipping it, we saw one motor home that was not mobile on its own being towed from the Beacon RV Park (which taxsifter calls a mobile home park). I heard later that this had been the home of the former park manager who has died.
After a rainy Wednesday at home, we started today by planting a stray heather in the port garden by CoHo Charters, where all our stray heathers go.
Below is looking east toward the Beacon RV Park, which is in the news again, here. Regarding what the article says about it being an RV park, not a year rounder place, then why, I wonder, does tax sifter refer to it as an MH (Mobile Home) park. The word HOME means something.
Long Beach
We weeded the Sid Snyder Drive planters.
Silver mounds of santolina…I love their look and their lemony scent.
At the west end, I said to Allan, “Hey, go up on the boardwalk and take a pic of what people see.” So he did.
We planted some penstemon and Verbena bonariensis (that I’d grown) in the garden on the east side of Fifth Street Park.
It is still boring. Pickings are slim for perennials at local nurseries due to supply problems.
We dumped debris, picked up some mulch, and Allan weeded in the SW quadrant of Fifth Street Park.
Because the garden was not weeded last spring and summer, the weeds reseeded like crazy.
I went on horsetail patrol in the NW quadrant. The garden would be so much easier without the horsetail.
Tragically, this is AFTER I weeded. I did get that one stray horsetail! The rest leave a rough haze of green.
That bed has three different colors of camassia, whose names I’m too tired to look up: the dark blue one almost done, the light blue at its peak and the white one coming on.
I’ll be adding cosmos soon. And will transplant some California poppies along the front. Feathery foliage helps hide horsetail.
Notes to self: Put some of the green santolina that I have started down this path on either side…
Needs more plants to camouflage the horsetail.
….and add some of the pale whitey pink Geranium macrorrhizum to these pink ones by the drinking fountain.
I helped Allan finish mulching on the southwest area.
Then we went home, quite shockingly, at four o’clock so that I could do a bit of weeding and plant sale sorting in my own garden.
While there is still plenty of planting to do at home and some additional plants needed in a couple of parks, probably cosmos when the ones I’m growing get big enough, the main push of Long Beach planters is done. What a relief. I hope we don’t have to replace any Cosmos ‘Sonata’ if a 39 mph wind comes tomorrow. Tiresome. Couldn’t wait any longer as need the planters looking fresh and nice for the big Memorial Day weekend.
We started at the welcome sign, where I realized I needed one more Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly‘ and two more uppies for a planter. How could I be one short on uppies? But I needed some plants for one small Ilwaco planter for local artist Wendi Peterson, so a trip to the Basket Case would be in order if we could find time. We needed to knock off hours early for a port commissioners zoom meeting, where public comment would be devoted to the port’s lease to the company that is evicting mobile home park residents. (That’s what tax records classify it as, a more protected category than an Recreational Vehicle park, when it comes to evictions.) So we were in an all fired hurry and had even started work almost two hours earlier than usual.
Adding Agyranthemum and yellow bidens
While I added cosmos to seven planters, Allan redid a couple of planters by the Veterans Field stage with red salvia and some red diascias and yellow bidens. I didn’t succumb to adding blue. I didn’t have anything blue left, nor did I have anything white.
He weeded the arc garden, which unfortunately had not gotten weeded before a time capsule centennial shindig that happened at the park last weekend. My fault, I have fallen out of practice at following the LB schedule for which park should get special attention when.
We did some tidying of a tiny parklet. A hydrangea had been blasted by the cold.
He helped me finish up by pushing some plants firmly into the soil in the big Lewis and Clark Square planter. I am hoping the rain forecast for tomorrow comes true so we don’t have to water them later this week.
Then off to refill the plant supply.
Basket Case Greenhouse
Back to Long Beach
I had acquired two white diascias so had Allan switch them out with the yellow bidens at the stage planters while I planted the last two uppies in a street planter.
We added the one last Agyranthemum to the welcome sign. While shopping, I had realized that I may have been buying a new one called ‘Vanilla Butterfly’ with bigger paler flowers. So now I have one bright yellow one. Or not. I am all mixed up. It was not intentional, as bright yellow was my goal. Sigh.
Ilwaco
We made it home, greeted by a neighbor, Cheyenne…
…in time to burble the rest of the new plants in a bucket of water before our zoom. The public comments were heartfelt, well thought out, and on point. At the end, one local citizen had some very stern words for the port commissioners. I just pointed out that it was easy to Google the new owners of the park and see that their park business model has been written up unfavorably in a couple of newspapers.
The meeting lasted for a over an hour; we felt it would be rude to leave zoom before it was over, but eventually we did so that we could get more work done. As we left home, I noticed a triad of golden foliage in our front garden.
We planted up Wendi’s planter, color coordinated with her gallery, which is known for its window displays…
Plus one yellow bidens
…and then spent probably an hour on our very weedy volunteer garden at the post office.
Then we were off on a planting day, delayed by a week because of wind and rain.
Long Beach
Planting is not my favorite thing.
Sparaxis…used to have lots more of these bulbs. One last tulip among some Crocosmia in Coulter Park.
Just a few events of the day: We pruned that giant annoying hebe in a planter by the frying pan…
….and we found that the planter in front of NIVA green and the one north of it has become full of invasive bluebells…HOW? I planted some red salvia in the NIVA planter and then switched them to some blue Salvia patens, because how can red plants look right by NIVA green. We fought our way through bulb foliage that has not yet died back enough to remove.
We do try to color coordinate with adjacent buildings.
Someone seems to have driven into the big Hebe ‘Boughton Dome’ across the street from Dennis Company…what a shame, its dome shape is shattered. It still has its odd little topknot, which I propagated starts from a year or two ago. They are not dome shaped!
I was frustrated to quit early, with six planters left to add cosmos to and one large and two small other planters to plant…all to attend a City of Ilwaco zoom meeting about the emergency housing situation where their zoom function failed just as public comment was about to begin. This delays the whole discussion and any help or solutions or accountability by another week…except for a port commissioners meeting tomorrow which starts at four!! I’ll be even more frustrated to quit work that early but we want to hear the public comments….then we can go back to work. No wonder there is so little participation when most people are still at work during the meetings.
As I finished this post, I checked the weather for Wednesday, when we have yet another local zoom meeting to attend (Downtown Ilwaco Revitalization group, just to listen in). I see that another 30 mph wind storm is due….so much for trying to keep the plants from being battered on their first week out. All in all, a frustrating day!
A light mist was drifting down when I started weeding, so I picked a fairly small project to begin with. This neglected section with some walking onions, rosemary, strawberries and a couple of interesting young plants (a buplureum and an Acacia pravissima) was solid weeds.
Tangly Cottage Gardening 