Monday, 7 April 2014
I do like an all Ilwaco work day. If only we did not have several well loved gardens up past 220th Street, I would like to keep all the work to Long Beach and Ilwaco.
We began just down the block at Larry and Robert’s garden. Seeing the old grass covered garden bed along the west wall of the house reminded me that clearing it was supposed to be one of our spring projects. Oops. We had not budgeted that much time. While I weeded the rest of the garden, Allan got halfway through that neglected task.
Possibly the gravel area that Allan discovered is supposed to be a spot for the wheelie bin!
Meanwhile, I weeded.
I do hope that tree, Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia. at the back of this sheltered area, comes back from the winter okay. It looks a little peaked and lost two small lower branches. I’m worried.
I added a few violas and an Erysimum ‘Winter Orchid’…so fragrant!…to the garden boat.
Before departing, I had to take a few photos of Tom and Judy’s “back forty”, the little sunny spot by their driveway.
The day, as you can see, had turned bright, sunny and warm. When I went home (just half a block’s walk) to get some violas for the boat, I had to change into cooler clothes. And yet, the whole time we were at Larry and Robert’s garden, we could hear the foghorns blowing and could see, between the port buildings two blocks away, white fog hanging low over the Columbia River.
We moved on to Don and Nellie’s garden just two blocks away. Our goal was to get the rest of the garden weeded so that we can get a yard of soil for it later this week, and then move on to the boatyard garden. It look longer than we thought.
I also weeded on the shrub bed on the north side of the house and a couple of pocket gardens here and there. The boatyard garden would have to wait for another day.
We did get to the Howerton Way garden, at the Port of Ilwaco, next to the Powell Gallery and Pelicano Restaurant. While driving home Sunday after helping Jenna move, I had noticed some shockingly large shotweeds in there. And then, pulling the shotweed Monday evening, I became increasingly irked by the last of the Howerton Way phormiums.
So ugly! So beat up by winter. And planted right next to the sidewalk, where it will want to get big as a bus and poke everyone in the eye. We did not do any of the original plantings along Howerton. It seems no thought was given to pokiness of certain plants, or to sight lines for people pulling out of driveways. Over the course of time, we have removed all but this one of the flax. Last fall, we got the port crew with a backhoe to pull a huge one out of this very garden, along with a pampas grass and, further down Howerton, two other giant grasses.
I poke around the phormium with our best shovel, saying to Allan that NEXT time we weeded here, it had to go. Imagine my delight when he went after it with the pick.
Now there are only two horrible Phormiums at the port. Ironically, they are ones we moved, with great difficulty, from the Time Enough Books parking strip garden to stand on either side of the bookstore entrance. Back in the day, people could not bear to throw the darn things out, and always wanted us to reposition them somewhere else. Now they are each the size of a garden hut and we’ve called upon the port crew to remove them. I no longer let myself get talked into saving any of that accursed plant.
As we gardened, fog rolled into the port parking lots.
We did a bit more weeding in the gardens by Don Nisbett Gallery and the Port Office. I found four dead as can be santolinas, and I think I know why. I had pruned four of them in the fall, since they had the most lovely rosettes of silver foliage down low. I believe that exposed them to the frost, with no old foliage to protect them, and so they plotzed. The ones I pruned in late winter all look fine…
I did not think to photograph the corpses.
We urgently need to get back to all of the Howerton (and the boatyard) gardens for more weeding. I’m trying not to get all stressed out about work, and spring clean up is easier since we quit one big, one medium, and one little job since last year (and then took on two new medium jobs….but still….)
The rain has put us behind, and yet I have cherished all the good reading weather.
Tomorrow, we hope to do one north end job and then pick up a yard of Soil Energy and mulch Nellie’s garden.