Sunday, 4 October 2015

Allan ambitiously refreshed the paint on the eaves trim of the house.

Allan’s photos: before

and after; the yellow is a left over colour from when the house used to be dull brown with yellow trim.
While I did a lot of productive garden puttering on what turned out to be a hot day, my big event was when I finally, after five years of wooing the orange cat from across the street, was accepted as a friend.

Of course this cat prefers to spend its days in our garden.

Up until today, this cat has run swiftly away when I even gaze upon it.


at long last!

my friend, Orange.
My main project was to set up the long narrow containers that I’d emptied on Friday in a new, sunny area for my new containerized strawberry patch idea. I dug out with great effort a patch of alstroemerias next to the concrete pad. I should have listened to Our Kathleen, because they have jumped the lawn into the nearest garden bed. I piled some into a big pot if anyone wants to try them; they are bright yellow ones.

alstroemeria by the garage, now roots piled in a big pot
I’m sure they will try to come back.
There had been an old falling apart rack of bamboo poles against the garage wall. I dismantled the whole thing (with some help from Allan) and moved them to outside the lean to in the work area:

ever useful bamboo and buckets

Some sort of container strawberry and kitchen garden is envisioned here.
The new area will need deer proofing somehow. And the ideal thing would be to grow beans up that wall. Something to think about before next spring. The lowest container is sunk in to where those alstroemerias were (and probably still are, although I did dig deep).
Allan took on another project, cutting down the pile of storm-fallen wood from last winter for the rest of this year’s campfires.

Allan’s photo: my mom’s old electric chainsaw

Allan’s photo

after: enough for how many more campfires this year?
I puttered with some of the longer pieces raising them up against the fence to block a nearby security light from distracting from the wilderness feeling of the campfire area. It may or may not work.

The bright light of early evening

an autumnal butterfly

evening in the garden

Aster lateriflorus ‘Prince’
Monday, 5 October 2015
Allan had gone off on a boating excursion by the time I awoke and found it much too hot to garden.

81.5! From 642weather.com. And the Cape Disappointment weather agreed.
I did test out a walkabout in the garden, arousing Smokey’s hope that we would enjoy a day outdoors.


Smokey tried to convince me it was a perfect day.
He flopped along in front of me throughout the garden to convince me how very lovely it was outside, but it was not to be, and I retreated into the slightly cooler house for a day of reading.
I had one chapter left in my current book, so I finished that.

It is a good read about a long quest for an affordable flat to purchase in New York City.

The author and I have certain tastes in common.
As she searches for a small apartment in the $500 – $600 thousand dollar range (!!!), she and her friend have a discussion about the rich, inspired by the wealth of some of the parents at her daughter’s school:

I also find Geri’s words validating as I share those feelings about many, although not all, of the rich.
I then settled in to read my last book by Kate Llewellyn, my favourite author of the year if not the decade.

Kate and Smokey, who adjusted to the idea of a day indoors.
I’ve had the book since last spring and have delved into a bit, and have since been waiting for a day when I could completely focus on it.
Here are just a few of my favourite bits. I do hope to blog at length about her books this winter.
When someone questions her Blue Mountain journals of every day life:

“…the events of a day made (hopefully sometimes) into a work of art and nothing can be made up. [My topics] are the weather, domesticity, love, art, gardening, the names of plants, a woman’s simple daily tasks and her heart’s thoughts. The people she meets who are her friends and visitors are included but no one else.”
and later:

That is just how I feel about writing this blog, although with less hope of it being a work of art. My favourite parts of Kate’s books are “her heart’s thoughts” and I often don’t have the transparency and courage to put those in. She inspires me. The most intensely personal thoughts about her life are something that I want to explore more here this winter.
(Stardust was later published as Burning.)
I also make nothing up, and even though I have been tempted with some time altering for better narrative flow, I find it necessary to my piece of mind to stick strictly to reality.
On moving to a smaller garden with houses close by:

What a perfect description of two different landscape styles: “…a house sits, ideally on a green lawn like a white stamp on an unaddressed envelope…that is happiness to many. I like an envelope scrawled all over with a stamp indecipherable from ink and inside a letter that is full of repose and serenity.”
Someone who does have a house like a postage stamp on a beautiful green lawn said to me, in a way that was meant to be a compliment, that my garden is “primitive”. I took it as the compliment it was (I think) meant to be, as she was comparing it with another garden that she thought might be worthy of being on the garden tour, and I think primitive meant wild and free, perhaps. I thought at the time, “You don’t know how actually sophisticated this garden is!”
People expressed their thoughts about Kate’s garden, too:

Twice, Kate mentions reading Iris Murdoch, with whom she now vies as my favourite author of my whole lifetime.


I’m fascinated with Kate’s passion in later life for making public gardens and know just how she feels about wanting to expand on and on:

After making the boatyard garden (which eventually turned into a paid job) and the post office garden, we now may be expanding into making a volunteer garden at the park a few blocks away.
With an early evening break to water some plants outside with the very last of the rain barrel water, I stayed in Kate’s world until finishing the book at about 10 PM.
The joy of reading all of Kate Llewellyn’s prose books came about when a reader of this blog suggested I might like Playing with Water. Allan could not find that one for me at Christmas so he got me The Waterlily, which just perfectly turned out to be the first of her journal series. Soon, I was mail-ordering all of her prose books from Australia since they are mostly not available here. Unless she writes more, and I hope she does, I have now finished them all.
Tuesday, 6 October 2015
I could have gardened despite the chilly wind (much better than yesterday’s heat). Instead, I had enjoyed my reading day so much that I had another one.

I recently found that there are new additions to the Dog Lovers’ Mystery series and I intend to go through them all. I started re-reading here, as my poor memory makes it seem like this book is all new. Conant’s series is well written, informative, with good insight into the character of humans and dogs, and best of all, they are witty.
I took one little walk through the garden and leave you with a few photos.

front garden with Coreopsis ‘Flower Tower’

cardoon gone to seed

I’ve stopped deadheading my cosmos.

Melianthus major and criss crossed elephant garlic

late flowering clematis on the west wall of the garage

Smokey again hoping for a gardening day, or maybe he is asking me to come back indoors and read some more.

a grey and windy day

I could have found many small weeds to pull.

late autumn roses

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and Stipa gigantea

This is the view I see each morning from my south window…enjoyable in all seasons and all weather.
Tomorrow: Allan’s boating excursion in Seaside.
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