13 May: weeding in the heat

Saturday, 13 May 2023

at home

I had many thoughts about retirement today, the conclusion being that I love the work in general but am exhausted by the responsibility of keeping public gardens watered. And I am thinking of the advice our wise client of the hill garden gave me yesterday, although he made it clear he didn’t intend it as advice, just more like musings on what someone had said to him about retirement: The time to retire is when you have enough and when you have had enough. We think we have the first one covered, and the worries about public gardens…well, I may have had enough of it.

I imagined what it would be like to have a few years of not fretting over when I will find time to weed my own garden. And what it would be like to water it when not tired at the end of a work day. And if, like my grandma, I have ten years of lucidity left, do I want to spend them at home? Why, yes, I think I do.

It was too hot to be in the sun. I found one shady spot, against the north wall of the house, in which to weed. I found the dreaded shiny geranium there, a very noxious weed that blew in from a garden a block west of us.

Its stems are bright red.

I love my full moon maple.

After weeding (with the sun on Davidia ‘Lady Sunshine’):

I would have loved to weed the east side of the front garden. Too hot! Here are a couple of photos I took yesterday:

A cardoon, not an artichoke. The rhododendron was a present from Steve and John.

Below: the jasmine from Tony Tomeo, inside the front fence, backed with Melianthus major.

Today, I just barely managed to walk around in the shady parts of the garden, trimming the un-leafed stem ends off of hardy fuchsias. Frequent recovery times were required indoors. I was too fretful to read, not even the Simon Gray memoir I’m currently partway through.

Next door, three deer browsed Alicia’s garden (one shown below).

Alicia brought us lunch from the Saturday market, which we ate in the semi shade of the campfire circle.

When some afternoon shade arrived at the arbor of Paul’s Himalayan Musk rose, Allan started a weeding job. I joined him and we went at the area from different directions.

The rose persisted in stealing my hat.

Pat and David had brought us some more river rock this morning, so I sorted out the good rocks from the gravelly bits and added them to the garden bed. It was supposed to be a rocky bed, and had rocks that had been buried when I decided it needed improving mulch. Meanwhile, Allan weeded all around the edge of the ponds.

The difference was impressive.

Allan had found a sun scorched new plant in the willow grove. We went to give it some water, poor thing.

I am sad. Evan Bean pointed out on a Facebook post about his plant troubles in this heat that “shade plants….would have been protected if this heatwave were later and the sun was at a higher angle” an angle that I had not even thought of.

In the very late evening, after I watered, we had a campfire dinner with Alicia. We were all so tired that the only photos that got taken during the first campfire of the year were these of Skooter. The tuxedo cat who may want a home also made an appearance but ran off as usual. Skooter doesn’t seem to mind him being around.

Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, and I don’t seem to be able to muster up the energy to go water anywhere but here. Its time for someone younger to take over the public gardens!