Monday, 12 November 2019
Skooter wakes up.
After our days of skiving off work for Halloween (but not resting), we buckled down to the fall clean up tasks.
Here is a mystery cat, a photo taken by Allan…somewhere along the way to work. Unfortunately for me, I missed seeing it.
The Depot Restaurant
It was high time to clip the hops off of the dining deck lattice. In fact, sous chef Jamie told us that they had just taken in the outdoor seating and had wondered when the hops would be removed. I do like to stay one step ahead so that no one has to ask us to do things, thus we were just in time.
I trimmed from the outside, while Allan trimmed from the inside.
before
north side of dining deck
after
I like to leave some perennials standing.
Allan’s photos:
We cleaned up along the east wall of the restaurant and put some river rock in a low spot where the edging logs got shifted..
Now we wait for a hard frost to take down the window box annuals, and we try to remember to put some water on the window boxes once a week.
north side
still blooming, planted by Roxanne from Basket Case Greenhouse
Long Beach
I started a clean up of the NW quadrant garden, putting in about an hour of work.
Before:
Because birds are still enjoying the seeds, I left some tall perennials in place even though I think some passersby will find it messy.
seeds on Solidago ‘Fireworks” and sanguisorba
after
before
an hour later
before
after
The pale pink hesperantha, either Mrs. Hegarty or Viscountess Byng, is such a runner that we pulled much of it last spring. A large amount that evaded us has been blooming beautifully in the autumn. I find that if we pull a massive amount, then about the perfect quantity of blooms remain.
Meanwhile, Allan string trimmed an impossible-to-weed bed (dank, wet, rooty) in the SE quadrant across the street.
There is talk of removing this bed, trees and all. The trees themselves are not healthy because of the wet soil.
With all that work done, I took this photo, below, and then ate my lunch whilst Allan ran the blower on the pavement.
We drove to Ilwaco and checked on the south garden by the Port of Ilwaco office—still with the cosmos that will not die.
just before sunset
It was not till we got home that Allan realized, while unloading debris, that the string trimmer and rake had been left behind on the bench in Fifth Street Park. He hared back there. Before he had arrived, I got a message from Cathy of Captain Bob’s chowder that a Long Beach local had noticed the tools and had alerted Cathy, who was holding them for us in the restaurant. Whew. We know other public gardeners who lost some power equipment by leaving it behind and having it gone by the time they returned and looked for it. The next time we saw our rescuer, Allan gave him a tip for saving us some stress and money.
Being home by five meant I had a nice relaxed evening for writing up the Halloween blogs at last.
