15 Feb: Long Beach trees and planters

Wednesday, 15 February 2023

We got an early start (due to morning insomnia while thinking about work) despite icy conditions at home.

Long Beach

We trimmed off the rudbeckia stems in the front of the welcome sign. We are still hoping the city crew will dig out and replace the horsetail infested soil in the back side.

Downtown, we trimmed and weeded all the planters and street trees. If you can wait till a bit later to do so with your plants, that would be better for them in cold weather. Or maybe I am overprotective; the santolinas that we trimmed last November look fine.

They look much prettier before trimming, but if we don’t do it, they will get leggy and woody and lose that nice dome shape.

One tree has annoying volunteer rugosa roses dating back to when I thought one little volunteer sprout was cute. Allan’s new mini chainsaw worked well.

There are 18 street trees and thirty six street planters plus some barrels and one big planter in Lewis and Clark Square.

a haze of weeds removed

It’s a shame an errant driver wrecked the perfect round shape of this Hebe ‘Boughton Dome’. I still love its unusual topknot.

Cutting back some Phygelius ‘Moonraker’ reveals crocuses and snowdrops.

A quick tidy in the little corner garden in Coulter Park…

…was followed by the clipping back of ferns by the Bolstad and Pacific pond (without falling in!)…

Friends who know what we like will know we did not plant the salal that has completely taken over that landscape.

Our mission was accomplished: The end of the complete pre-holiday tidying of all our Long Beach planters and parks. Sometimes we amaze even ourselves.

During this whole work week, we’ve had lovely conversations with appreciative and interested tourists and locals. Makes the job worthwhile.

The work board tonight:

We haven’t heard a peep about the one larger job we thought we were going to take back so…maybe not. We have no need to chase after more work. So we will take some time off now to recuperate and return to our small jobs after the (one hopes) last cold spell of the winter.