12 May: half day of work

Friday, 12 May 2023

Port of Ilwaco

After a productive morning off, we deadheaded and quickly weeded our two remaining gardens at the port, Time Enough Books and the Freedom Market.

The contrast is strong between our cared for garden at Freedom Market…

…and the ones I walked by, passing two curbside beds we no longer care for.

The world without us is perhaps even more enjoyed by little critters:

The oxeye daisy is on the noxious weed list. It may blow in from nearby Cape Disappointment, where it is rampant. Or has been; I think they are trying to get control of noxious weeds up there.

Our spring clean up used to include the favour of clipping this sword fern next to a business:

Approaching Time Enough Books on foot; Allan drove:

Time Enough Books’ Ceanothus, possibly ‘Concha’, is in bloom.

The lemon cypress appears to be dying, especially the one that somebody harshly cut back from the building. I am not happy, I feel too tired to deal with cutting it down and hauling it off and finding something new. I hope it limps through the summer and then we will retire and let it be someone else’s problem. I kind of doubt it will last the next four months though.

Oh dear, it just has to go. If only the backside had not been whacked!!

The boat of fuchsias looks nice.

As does this amber coloured geum.

hill garden

The main reason we were working today was the need to water the hill garden before the hot weekend (supposed to be in the 90s).

While climbing the grassy hill, we had a surprise.

Since we were going there, we raked around and did some redesigning of the Floral Fabric Garden (formerly landscape fabric), to make room for a sit spot on the edge and to make a clear view over low plants to Saddle Mountain, across the Columbia River in Oregon. Allan cut a volunteer spruce tree that would grow to hide the view.

The monkey puzzle tree is in the downhill neighbours’ garden and was quite small when the previous owner, Suzanne, planted it, back when we used to work on that garden.

Allan made the path (with pre existing lava rock) wide enough to accommodate a bench. It will have to be heavy; in the garden below, a heavy birdbath blew over in winter wind and a table flew off the south deck, around the east side of the house, and into Suzanne’s car!

I worked on weeding (easy in arborist chips) dandelions out of the centre, in order to make a sit spot eventually surrounded by flowers.

Our friend and client came home to me telling him my vision, which is so far pretty much just inside my head.

We finished with Allan watering the upper driveway garden while I did some, but not all, of the weeding there. The Floral Fabric Garden is now a matter of smaller enhancements and tidying around the edges, until autumn when I can put in more bulbs and perennials. Now I hope we will be able to shift back into mostly maintenance mode so that the couch grass in one upper driveway bed doesn’t take advantage of our distraction. I thought we’d be able to plant more into May, but the hot weather has me worried.

Now for three days off….unfortunately, hot ones, which may adversely impact my ability to weed at home.