5 December: return to deep ditch

Monday, 5 December 2022

The big plan today to pick up the final Long Beach cheque of 2022 and run some errands was foiled by the cheque not being ready. (I always call city hall first before making a special trip for nothing.) Errands can wait till tomorrow. Instead, we went to Time Enough Books and Freedom Market at the port to plant some alliums that I had thinned out from the post office garden, kept all summer, then forgot to plant with the big batches of bulbs…otherwise, the hillside garden would have gotten some, too. I’ll thin the post office stand again next spring. This particular allium, cowanii, has a bad habit, like all alliums, of tatty looking leaves just as the flower is about to bloom. Photo from the John Scheepers/Van Engelen catalog:

We were so focused on getting done that the only photos we took were of a little project at Freedom Market, where Allan weeded a bed by the west wall hose faucet, pulled out ridiculous landscape fabric that was so flimsy it was rotting away, and I planted some double orange daylily that needed a home.

At home again, I was longing to get out into the garden. Although it was hard to go indoors, I made myself sit down and watch a livestream of The Bookshop Band direct from Shaun Bythell’s Bookshop in Scotland (where it was 8:30 PM). Allan did not have any problem going indoors to watch, as he is not especially bothered by spending nice weather at the computer. I was so glad that I attended the show live and was able to engage by making an appreciative comment. I think the show is still available to watch on The Bookshop’s Facebook page.

My favourite song was, of course, In a Shop With Books In. You can watch a version here that is set in The Bookshop, or a version here, in which the lyrics are completely audible, and don’t miss this video which was created by Shawn singing the words backwards and walking backwards through the shop. He wrote in his latest book that it was not easy to do.

At 1:30, I was all ready to get outdoors into beautiful warm still winter weather when I checked two mysterious voicemails from Des Moines. Woe and an hour on the computer ensued when I found out that due to mutual delegation and miscommunication and just plain forgetfulness, we had missed sending in a business tax payment to the state. Only a month and five days late, it cost us a $145 fine. I will not brood about this (well, only a little); only twice in 30 years in business have I missed a payment due date, and the previous time was years ago, so I can’t blame it on old age.

FINALLY outdoors at 2:30 I turned my attention to juggling perennials by digging out some more Impatiens omieana from the danger tree bed. I’m trying it out in various places in the Bogsy Wood to see if there is a damp enough area where it won’t flop in summer, or even if it does flop, a place where it won’t be as front and center as in the danger tree bed. Today, this involved digging a new planting bed next to the bridged swale and expanding the round paver path when I remembered two big round ones that had appeared when we reshaped the Rozanne loop paths (big pots had been sitting on them).

I have a new vision for the danger tree bed, where we recently transplanted a Japanese maple and Corokia ‘Sunsplash’. There is way too much Persicaria bistorta ‘Superba’, with pink spikes, on the west side of Rozanne loop. It’s a runner but not hard to dig. I’d like to move almost all of it to form a large swathe in the danger tree bed where I think it might be somewhat more tolerant of our recent pattern of hot summer weather.

The persicaria came out of here…

….and went here where the impatiens used to be.

Here they both were as they looked in July.

The last hour of daylight was spent happily digging sand out of the deep ditch and shifting river rocks and chunky rocks around to start to refine the edges. A short bridge will go across where the two cones are. Soon, I hope, because it’s already getting old having to take a side path to get to the bridged swale.

(I wrote this on Tuesday morning, and by Tuesday afternoon, Allan was already working on the bridge without having read it.)