A decade ago, I wrote about and compiled four previously unpublished journal collections from my 2014 stay at the SBH, but had already shared so many posts from the journals that I got kind of anxious about it and stopped. Now that the Sylvia Beach Hotel has sold, ending the era of the book loving friends who ran it for years, I think it is time to unearth some previously unshared selections from the journals. The unoccupied hotel rooms were left open during the day so that guests could explore the author themes, which made the journals accessible to anyone who wanted to go into the rooms to read…which is how I spent most of my time there. This is the first of four entries on this theme. I know the handwriting can be hard to decipher sometimes, so maybe these posts are just for ardent fans of that wonderful hotel. The previous posts from 2014 about that particular trip, with lots of photos of the hotel and its rooms, can be read starting here.
2014
From my 2014 trip with Carol to the Sylvia Beach Hotel, where I immersed myself in the room journals. I want them to be saved, to never be lost to tsunami or fire or careless guests. (Some of the older ones have entries completely washed out by water spills.) I’ve organized my favourite entries from this trip into themes.
The theme of how wonderful the Sylvia Beach Hotel is
the attic:
about the reading spot in the attic by the singing pipes
The attic reading spot used to look like this.
the library:
My solution: don’t leave the hotel!
dinner and The Game:
guests at dinner
gifts from friends:
gifts from fate:
the perfect place:
The hotel cats get are often the subject of journal entries:
One of the library journals, appropriately, has cat quotations (and has attracted a lot of journaling about cats).
A quotation by Mr. Nichols is painted on a wall in my garden: A garden without cats can scarcely be called a garden at all.
[The day this post publishes is Carol’s birthday! Happy birthday, my friend since 1978.]
Carol and I both reading at the Sylvia Beach Hotel
Allan and I put up the trellises which had blown down from where they were stashed against the west fence. They are now on the north fence along the sidewalk.
I got the stump of the sad, cut back grevillea out. Sad, but still an accomplishment. It had definitely grown from gallon sized but the cold late winter was too much for it, and it had never fully thrived here.
I replaced it by transplanting my new camellia and put a small but I hope eventually large enough to block security lights Escallonia ‘Iveyi’ where the camellia had been. I got some river sand out of the deep path…
…to mix with compost and existing soil for the newly planted camellia and escallonia.
I went on with some compost sifting from bin three to bin two.
didn’t get very full loads at all, and moved the contents in buckets back to the shade area I’m working on. First batch:
I reached a layer of crab shells that aren’t quite broken down and don’t smell of crab at all.
Second batch, an hour later, and I was too tired to go on sifting.
The bins, after:
I did muster up the energy to finally plant one of my mail order plants in a place on the west of the house between a driveway and a gravel path, where it might get shaded by cosmos this year but may have a chance to get some heat. Probably not enough, still not sure why I succumbed to buying it! It’s next to tag, middle bottom of photo.
Really, what possessed me?
Finally, I applied liquid iron to my sadly yellow Podocarpus ‘Maki’ in one last attempt to green it up before…I don’t know what its fate will be.
I realised how ironic it is to fret over it being yellow, when my whole garden is rampant with deliberately golden foliage plants. I walked around and photographed many of them, and that will be a topic for the near future.
On my walk, I wondered why there is so much bird poop under this elderberry (to the right of the gunnera)…
I can’t find a nest or any reason for all the poop!
When Allan walked to the post office, he saw the cute neighborhood cat that often lounges on the sidewalk on the next block.
For the next four days, we are going to diverge from our themes of gardening and boating and go back in time ten years to some previously unpublished posts from a trip to the Sylvia Beach Hotel.
After the quilt show and some vine pruning, I took some time for garden enjoyment and smelling the roses.
Paul’s Himalayan Musk once again inspired me to think about whether or not to have an open garden day in its honour. Maybe Sunday, I thought. By the end of the day, I felt too tired, so didn’t announce it, which turned out just as well because Sunday was unexpectedly cold, windy, and rainy.
A few days ago, I had photographed this rose bud near the fire circle.
Today, it had opened and has a pleasing light fragrance.
Ghislaine de Feligonde was toning well with Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’.
It is not fragrant but is so floriferous. Many years ago, maybe 1990, I visited an old rose nursery near Snohomish, north of Seattle. I’d bought some roses and asked the kind and elderly owner which one he would recommend and he said this one. It moved down with me from Seattle to Seaview, then Ocean Park, then my little Ilwaco house, then here…and then died. But after a couple of years of a fruitless online quest, I found another one to mail order from High Country Gardens.
This, and I don’t know what its name is, is my most fragrant rose, and old one that runs around but is easy to pull where not wanted.
Its fragrance is intense.
Bees are enjoying the ceanothus in the back driveway garden.
In the front garden, I admired one of my favourite alliums, Allium nigrum. It is white with dark seeds. I like its shape.
Stephanie and Margarita came over and admired Paul’s Himalayan Musk. (Margarita wanted a photo of the three of us by the rose; the late afternoon sun suggested where we could stand.)
I sifted one barrow of compost….
…enough to prepare a shady spot, that till recently was swamped with fringe cup, to receive a Cimicifuga ‘Brunette’.
When we got home from the hooked rug show, I tackled a big project in the front garden: cutting the rampant Euonymus ‘Wolong Ghost’ from the north wall of the house. I liked the privacy, darkness, and secrecy it provided but Allan wanted more light, and as soon as I began trimming it, I realized it would be better for the house to have access to light and air.
Before, the view from inside the living room (and I liked it that way; for one thing, it blocked most of the security lights that blare at us from across the street).
The descriptions of it on Plant Lust remind me that the leaves started out more variegated, so I assume it has reverted to green, perhaps. In fact, I have to wonder if it is a completely different plant altogether whose identity I have forgotten. If so, what is it? I would welcome enlightenment.
Outside, it had gone all the way to the roof, was twined in the arbor, and was blooming with non-fragrant flowers.
I got rather disconcerted when I saw the size of a stem that had wedged itself beside the window screen.
A clematis was getting swamped.
The stems were enormous but easy to cut with secateurs. I remembered putting the bamboo poles to help it climb when I hopefully and tenderly planted one tiny little plant of it, from Heronswood Nursery or maybe Windcliff Nursery, maybe ten years ago?
Zinc watched as I went to the other window and pulled vines out of the catio run.
The rest of my audience was spiders, dozens, I swear, some very large. I am not particularly arachnophobic but did wish I was wearing gloves. I completely changed clothes afterwards because I felt one might be in a fold of clothing.
Because I cannot look up without getting dizzy, I was unable to get the upper part of the vine, but I knew Allan would be eager to finish the job since he was the one who wanted light and air for the house and himself. Here is the view from inside after I was done.
The strips of paper across the windows are at just the height to block the security lights from blasting my eyes and giving me a migraine…if I move around the room with good posture. On cloudy days, when the half-length cafe-style curtains are open, the lights are on and almost as hurtful as migraine triggers as they are at night. (When we first moved here, the bright lights were not there, just one pleasant amber cottage-y light. We had to raise the curtains two inches when the lights were installed!)
Saturday, 8 June 2024
Allan finished the pruning job. There was still lots of eunymous climbing behind my variegated Japanese maple and Davidia involucrata ‘Lady Sunshine’, the variegated dove tree.
I had cut some stems that I had been unable to bring down, and Allan cut and removed the rest, although the base and roots are still there and will have to be monitored. If we let it put on ten years of growth again, we’d likely be too old to deal with it!
Allan also found many, many spiders.
Looking down at the stems he had dropped:
In progress: The centre arbor trellis was revealed again. Now the clematis will have a chance.
His audience at the east window:
I actually haven’t looked at it; I think some more could be cut down. I must confess I have slightly gone off this plant after its wild behaviour and rampant growth all the way to and upon the roof.
From inside after Allan’s pruning:
It’s kind of nice to see Lady Sunshine. The house plants will be much happier, and so is Allan. It’s a north window, so doesn’t admit sunshine, and it’s too bad that most of the windows are “blown”, obscuring the garden view. I do miss my green cave.
We finally got down to a museum exhibit which has been on my mind, because I have a lifelong connection with hooking rugs. My grandmother made them, and I inherited her rug hooking frame and made many of my own, until I moved from Seattle to a house so small that I didn’t have enough room for the frame, much less my baskets of wool strips, sorted by colour. With more room now, I sometimes think of starting again, and this show was certainly inspirational. It is free and runs through July 6th, from Wednesday to Saturday, and the rug club is in attendance on Fridays from 10-03 P.M. You can read more on the museum site, here.
Strawberry Fields
Designed by Abby Schlingensiepen
Hooked by Betsy Millard
This rug was designed after a painting by Rebecca Wright. She was a graduate of the Portland Art Museum School in 1949 and was the mother of Abby and Betsy. The image is Mount Hood as seen from the Gresham strawberry fields.
I was immediately moved emotionally by seeing not only the rugs but such a large club devoted to making them. My grandmother would have loved this; she herself was part of a rug hooking club, show in this photo, in which she is on the right with a friend’s hand on her shoulder.
So let’s have a look at some of the rugs in the museum exhibit.
Gardener
Hooked by Toni Jette
Gardener is a pattern taken from the July 1915 Vogue magazine cover. Purchased from Ribbon Candy Rug Hooking Co.
Ready for the Halloween Ball Hooked by Toni Jette This is a vintage postcard pattern from W. Cushing Co. I used wool strips, yarn and sari silk.Gray’s River Covered Bridge Designed and hooked by Jerre McDanaldMiniature rugs with matching chair and sofa. The photo is of Jerre and her husband.
I got sentimental and almost wept over the little furniture. My grandmother used to make tiny furniture out of tin and upholstered them with velvet cushions. I am sure she would have made tiny rugs if she had thought of it.
Three corners of the room had exhibits of smaller pieces, wall art and pillows.
Continuing around the room looking at the large rugs, I mostly focused on the garden and nature themes (because this is, after all, supposedly a gardening blog).
Sunflower
Designed and hooked by Mary Cohn
This design is based on the Gustav Klimt painting The Sunflower, 1906-1907.
Absolutely stunning in detail…
That would be my favourite had it not ended in a tie with this one, depicting the village of Seaview, where I lived for my first year on the Long Beach Peninsula. All of these places are so familiar to me.
Seaview Real and Imagined
Designed and hooked by Mary Cohn
Crows, Designed by Michelle Palmer, hooked by Mary Crohn
Forest Floor, below, is another beautiful nature study.
Jacobean II
Hooked by Kitty Speranza
In Motion
Designed and hooked by Toni Jette
Hooked with all wool strips from mostly found wool. The round polka dots are worked in Waldoboro style-hooked with very high loops, then trimmed to shape.
Rose Rug Designed by Joan Moshemer Hooked by Jerre McDaneld
I had a wonderful talk about rugs, my grandmother, and the club with Jerre and said “Let me take your picture so I remember who you are!”
This has inspired me to maybe stop by sometime when the club is in session, and also to write a post about my grandmother’s hooked rugs over on The Grandma Scrapbooks, the blog that I have dedicated to her. I will, some rainy or windy or too hot to garden day, and will share it over to here when I get it done.
While Allan went boating, I did some garden puttering. First, and sadly, I cut down my Grevillea victoriae to the ground. It shows little sign of recovering from the cold snap and has never looked 100 percent good. (The sign hanging in it was for the garden open day.)
It is sad because Steve and John, who moved away from their beloved-to-many bayside garden brought it back from Portland for me several years ago, but I still have the rhododendron that they gave me.
Commemorated by a sun spot on the lens:
Somehow I cannot get that one area to fill in as a sight blocker. If only I had planted one of the thriving pittosporums there!
The “table gate” entrance to the back garden is draped low with Paul’s Himalayan Musk rose, that I will trim when it is done blooming.
I did some half moon edging on parts of two lawn paths, newly curvy ones that needed some refining.
Being some pretty minor edging, it didn’t get any before and after photos.
It was enjoyable working next to the sunny garden beds, despite a fierce wind that made the blue tarp “wall” flap loudly.
The wind blew over the trellises that were stored against the west fence. Soon enough, the escallonias will fill in there.
I sifted some compost from bin three to bin two.
Bin one is now the place to put debris that can go through our not so great little chipper-shredder.
Got this much compost:
While taking the compost to the bed where I had dug out a lot of fringe flower, I found fungi.
The bins after today’s sifting:
I picked some arugula and after a recent disappointing harvest of one set of radishes, in a different fish tote veg box, I found some big white icicle radishes that I thought would be bitter but which proved to be the most mild, delicious radishes I have ever had.
I read for a couple of hours before Allan came home early enough that I didn’t even worry.
some political reading
I finished The White Bonus and hereby offer up some take aways.
Beautiful prose:
“If American life is a river, relief from poverty and strife sits atop one of its slippery banks, and the American Dream sits safely back from its edge.Few of us manage to plant our feet firmly enough in that soil to have no fear of it falling away; fewer still are born there in the first place. Most of us, instead, start out somewhere in the water and do what we can to make it across. Family wealth determines our starting point. Economic class is the distance we must cover.”
About the longterm effect of the GI Bill (for war veterans) on generational wealth: “...the G.I. Bill covered tuition and living expenses for veterans approved for study. The policy launched many poor and working-class white men into the professional middle class that defined mid-century affluence, and doubled the number of college graduates nationwide. Yet, at the insistence of southern politicians–and the quiet acceptance of many northern politicians- the educational benefit required the approval of local officials, which meant that any Black veteran seeking to use their benefit would need the approval of local, white officials. This gatekeeping meant that white veterans were dramatically more likely to see their military service open the door to a college education. Indeed, while the G.I. Bill was in theory available to any veteran, use of its benefits was deeply segregated. Today, many scholars regard the post war G.I. Bill as a source not only of social mobility (for whites), but of racial disparity, too.”
[My mother was a veteran, too; I wonder if the GI benefits were offered to her?]
“The rewards organized under the G.I. Bill were legion. Veterans could get their full tuition and living expenses at a college, university, or vocational education program covered by the government. Vets who wanted to apprentice, rather than study, could earn a subsistence wage while completing on-the-job training. Vets who wanted to buy a home could get plenty of help: No down payments, modest interest rates, and thirty-year terms combined to make it possible for veterans from the working class to own a home. If you were a veteran who wanted to build a mid-century American Dream, the G.I. Bill had the tools you needed.And yet, as Ira Katznelson details at length in his book When Affirmative Action Was White, few of the bill’s resources went to Black vets.”
“Take, for instance, the Veterans Administration mortgages, which funded nearly one million homes from 1946 to 1951. While the government would back the mortgage and offer favorable terms, the actual financing had to go through a private bank. To buy a home, a Black vet would need to find a bank willing to give a loan-for a house in a neighborhood the VA, which used FHA standards to assess homes, would approve.” The book tells the history of how that turned out.
As for education, “Educational benefits in the G.I. Bill were little different. To use the grant, Black vets needed to get approval from local bureaucrats, who typically harbored prejudices that could pose barriers to access. Once approved, they would need to find a college that would accept them.” Among details of how THAT turned out: “Black southern colleges, combined, had to turn away 55 percent of veteran applicants for lack of space.”
This to me is the crux of the matter in my life, in that my father and my uncle benefited greatly from the GI Bill, especially my uncle, who used it to go to college and became a wealthy accountant, and when I was 25, he had taken possession of my grandmother’s house when she fell victim to dementia, and he sold it to me when no one would have considered a poor, self employed housecleaver for a mortgage. He took a meager downpayment and, as I later learned when I had to refinance (because he set it up so a balloon payment was due in seven years), financed the mortgage in a way that shocked a bank officer who said to me, “A FAMILY MEMBER did this?!” But the result nevertheless was that I am a homeowner to this day, now without a mortgage, which enables me have the seasonal gardening career that I love. The effect of the GI Bill on my family turned into a degree of generational wealth for me.
Some things I learned about labor (I knew some, but far from all of this): “One of the centerpieces of the New Deal, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, established a minimum wage and the forty-hour work week, but it didn’t apply to all workers. Agricultural workers, the majority of whom, at the time, were Black workers in the South, didn’t get protected. Neither did service workers, including workers doing housework in private homes, in laundries, in hotels and restaurants, even in hospitals. Legislators excluded the same workers from Social Security benefits, and excluded agricultural and domestic workers from the right to organize unions, too.”
“Every piece of New Deal legislation related to labor excluded certain jobs from coverage. The jobs that gained labor protections were, in the 1930s, mostly held by white, male workers; the excluded ones, by workers who were Black, female, or both. As a result, Social Security only applied to 13 percent of Black women who worked, and 46 percent of Black workers overall. Meanwhile, more than half of American-born white workers, and two-thirds of white immigrant workers, had jobs that were covered, and gained access to old-age protection.”
This really shocked me about nurses having been excluded: “It took decades for most of the excluded jobs to come under the protection of law–including hospital workers like nurses.”….”In 1966, amid the adoption of federal civil rights legislation, hospital workers and farmworkers gained the right to minimum wages…” …..”In 1974, hospital workers gained the right to organize, the same year that domestic workers gained the right to minimum wage.” 1974!! I’d been out of high school for a year.
Another mind boggling thing that I learned: Some states charge prisoners for their lodging. “…a 1997 Connecticut law that charges incarcerated people room and board for their time served. Initially, the state charged incarcerated people $31,755 a year for their room and board. By 2022, it was charging $90,885 a year.”
The book is part memoir. I figured that the author would be criticised for putting so much of her personal story in it. The book consists of about equal parts of pertinent stories of other folks and families, and history and details about discrimination and privilege, and the rest is her own story. As a memoir, I was interested in her story, too, and I consider the book as a whole to be a gift of knowledge and insight. What to do about that knowledge is the question that has haunted me since I first joined friends in “study groups” about racism and classism in the 1970s, and I don’t have good answer for me (partly considering where I live). The book Waking Up White first brought home the history of the GI Bill to me (although I already knew about redlining, AKA racism in real estate, in my home city of Seattle, thanks to a progressive high school teacher). I guess one tiny reparation I can try to make is to share information from what I read.
We checked on the garden, weeded, and trimmed some diseased branches off the rather sad plum tree. It has an insect problem, which we are not even licensed to deal with. Usually, it only affects the tips of the branches, however today we took off a couple of entire branches, which fortunately were ones that were about to protrude over the sidewalk anyway.
The insects curl up the leaves, and at during least one recent year, aphids or something like that secreted a honey dew that made the leaves below go moldy. Allan will have to use the long handled loppers to snip off the tips of the branches. I get too dizzy looking up. I swear this tree makes me want to retire from ALL the jobs! We legally cannot spray, and don’t want to spray anyway because of the insect apocalypse.
It’s a frustrating situation.
[Allan had a boating plan for Thursday and was going to address the light pruning of branch ends on Friday but had too many local lawns to mow, so we decided to put it off till our next work day on the following Wednesday. Better late than never? We were simply too tired.]
Allan also tidied up a corner that is rarely seen…
The flower garden looks good.
Diane’s garden
The wind and rain had been especially hard on the septic vault garden, making a Geranium ‘Orion’ sprawl out…
…and knocking down part of a blue globe thistle.
We could have skipped this week because of not needing to water at the Red Barn. I had decided to go in order to do a small but strenuous project which I had not been finding the time for: edging behind the driveway garden bed. A lot of rocks got piled there when the new lawn was put in…I can’t even remember where the rocks were before.
A fuzzy back edge:
After…
…and again with Allan pulling a weed.
He had weeded the roadside garden….
…including, coincidentally, thoroughly around the rocks at the far end.
The Stipa gigantea in golden bloom:
Holly came home during the last of our time there and got her biscuit.
I showed Diane the handsome edge I had made.
In checking the containers, I found a beautiful viola…
And I added a pretty new very fragrant dianthus to the septic vault garden.
On the back side of the vault, I trimmed the yellow flowers off of the Jackman’s Blue rue, which I grow for the foliage; the flower doesn’t go with Diane’s pastel theme. There are many other flowers to keep the bees happy.
The Red Barn Arena
We just did a quick weeding. I have no idea why that mat is on the lawn!
Diane’s garden is just across the field and behind that hedge:
The Planter Box
Another reason we had gone to work was that I had run out of potting soil and needed to stock up. I have checked online around the area and found that The Planter Box has the best prices, even better than the big box stores across the river, of quality 2 cubic foot bags of soil. I also got a bag of steer manure and a bag of mushroom compost to mix up with one bag of the potting soil for my own personal potting up. G&B potting soil, the kind I can afford, is getting more sawdusty. I simply cannot afford the top of the line brands like Happy Frog!
The big greenhouse was beautifully colourful today.
Also, I remembered to photograph the flyer for the always excellent north county garden tour, which this year is closer to us than usual (it’s usually up in or near the Aberdeen area).
at home
A rose blooming high over the driveway:
A couple of days ago, after the storm, I found an extraordinarily fragrant flower from it blown onto the wet driveway.
In the driveway garden today, I was pleased to see an Eryngium giganteum is flowering…
…and the sprawling Halmiocistus wintonensis ‘Merrist Wood Cream’ still is in full bloom…
…although I will trim it back to fresh growth when it is done flowering.
Using two wheelbarrows, I mixed up one bag of G&B potting soil, one bag of steer manure and one bag of mushroom compost and some coir and filled up a big garbage can of the resulting good potting mix. This was inspired by the description of doing so in Thomas Hobb’s great book, The Jewel Box Garden.
adding soaked coir to the mix
That was tiring indeed and all I accomplished at home except for another delicious harvest from my arugula, and a frustrating cull of some white radishes that were starting to bolt before they made any decent radishes at all.
At least they gave me a green ingredient for the compost bin.
We had the predicted rain and heavy wind, the latter of which was disconcerting when I went out to close the back door of the greenhouse. I was glad I had closed it because the wind was making the greenhouse cold even though the door was not banging.
The barrels that I had almost emptied into buckets yesterday had refilled.
The grey rain gauge in the morning:
We got 1.47 inches of rain in one day and night.
Lots of noise and motion in the alder grove, not used to so much wind when heavy with leaves.
I went back indoors, drenched after just the walk to the greenhouse and back, and wrote 7 blog posts, getting all caught up. Next to me:
I still did not start a new book because I didn’t finish writing here until 8, and then it was too late to start before our usual 9 o’clock dinner and telly.
Monday, 3 June 2024
I was counting on two more days of rain and instead woke to a rather fine day, which meant I had to go outdoors.
the red rain gauge
The outdoor cucumbers had survived the storm just fine.
I opened the green house and then took a garden walk and found alder leaves and twigs blown all across the garden..
iris in the water canoe
The only thing that had blown or fallen over was a planted birdbath, which had been hidden by a sideways growth of Rose ‘Radway Sunrise’.
The deep path had dramatically refilled in a way that is rare for June, if not unheard of.
The metal path lay mostly underwater…
…but not as deep as winter when even this junction would be covered…
The T-path through the Bogsy Wood:
In the bridged swale the fish were almost swimming.
The glue had not held on the new (to us) rescued little frog after such a rain challenge.
Sometimes in the winter, these stepping stones are completely underwater.
The deep swale was full again.
Outside the south fence, the frog bog is also full again. Yesterday…
Today:
Some willows had slumped into the bog.
Another view of the deep path:
Returning to the garden by the fire circle…
Allan helped by moving the birdbath to a more auspicious spot.
Some bits and bobs that had been in it got new spots…a handle, and some china fragments.
I would like a plant table, not too tall, not too short, behind the wooden chairs to complete this tableau.
I found more boxes and bins and jugs and a leaky garbage can (with a bag in it now) and even some big tin cans to fill with rain water since we are supposed to have still more to refill the barrels again.
Ooops…
The purple bin full of water was too much for those green jugs full of water, but they were salvageable.
Ready for drought!
The open water containers will get used quickly with all my potted plants, so they won’t have a chance to breed mosquitos or evaporate.
While doing all that, I noticed my hanging basket of golden spider wort, up high so the slugs and snails don’t bother it.
And a clematis again chomped by slugs, including a culprit who met a sad fate.
But one strand of clematis had escaped the chomping and I got it raised up.
I am finally quite happy with the east front garden:
I did some pruning on the west side of the house of old wood of a once magnificent blue potato vine (Solanum crisp ‘Glasnevin’) that had mostly died. I wonder if I could spread disease by turning it into arborist chips with the chipper? And some of the overgrown Mermaid rose where it had poked Allan in the head when he was checking a water barrel earlier today.
Before:
Some of it makes a framework to keep the roses above our heads.
After:
Before:
Allan had been checking over the work trailer but joined in for a last bit of pruning.
After:
When I came indoors at last, my chair was not available so I decided to write this blog post AND do the monthly billing rather than oust Zinc and Faerie from their cozy nap.
Tangly Cottage Gardening 