Wednesday, 20 November 2019
Frosty greeted me when I awoke (after not enough sleep, again).
I am appreciating my time with him after coming home one evening last week and finding him all wobbly and confused again. I had googled how much honey to give him and learned from reputable vet sites that it should be a tablespoon, not just the touch of honey I had given him the first time. Getting a tablespoon of honey into a cat’s mouth was not easy. He ended up with honey dripping from his whiskers and sticky honey on his ears and plenty of honey on my shirt sleeves.
Dr Google for cats informed me that he could die from one of these spells and that if he were to be found in a coma, we must try to administer honey or corn syrup. I was glad that soon we will be home more. I hope to have at least one more reading winter with him. He is 15, maybe even 15 going on 16.
On the way to work, we pulled the last cosmos from the post office garden. The light is so low now that even at midmorning, the River City Playhouse across the street casts a big shadow on the garden.
Port of Ilwaco
We began with a continuation of yesterday’s fall clean up along Howerton Avenue, from RiversZen Yoga to Salt Hotel.
the Time Enough Books garden boatLong Beach
I tidied up Fifth Street Park’s west side some more while Allan worked on the east side and a street tree garden. I’d got a last small shipment of bulbs and added some more narcissi (a cyclamineous mix and a miniature mix), hoping for a better spring show in 2020.
A handsome horse and carriage passed by going south….
Allan’s photo…then west…
…and then to the north.
I had thought someone was calling out “Jeeves! Jeeves!” but it had been “Gee! Gee!”
The pineapple sage in the west garden continues to bloom.
Although it is the only one for blocks around, a hummingbird had found it and worked at every flower.
This particular pineapple sage has come back for several years in a row. I must plant more in 2020.
The final street tree bed (of eighteen in all), before and after:
Allan’s photosIt will be chock-a-block with narcissi come springtime.
We then pulled the Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ foliage out of all three parking lot berms on the east side of downtown.
before
after
before
after (Allan’s photos)
south berm
middle bermI have always wanted to do something better on the middle berm than the few clumps of crocosmia and rugosa roses. We have never found the time. (And they do get walked upon by owners of parked cars.) In the spring, the quaking grass takes over and is attractive.
blackberries on the north berm (Allan’s photo)After we dumped a trailer load of debris at City Works, a beautiful cat appeared and inspected our work.
Allan’s photosI did not have time to make friends. We were racing sunset.
We cleaned up the welcome sign, pulling the agyranthemum, bottoming out the Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and trimming the Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ so that the lights will shine on the sign without deep shadows (I hope).
I had to stand back a quarter of a block to not have my long shadow in the photo…and still had my head in the frame.
before
It was a warm day with no jackets needed!
after
before
after (I left some still blooming bidens along the edge.)
north side, before
and after (Allan’s photos)The grape hyacinth foliage is already up, which is perfectly normal.
Port of Ilwaco
With less than an hour till sunset, we returned to the Howerton Avenue gardens, planted some narcissi in the east and the At the Helm Hotel curbside beds.
east bed (Allan’s photo)Allan sheared down the pearly everlasting by the hotel.
before
after, with red twig dogwood looking grandI did not have time to gather the precious leaves! We had just time to get home, offload debris, catch our breath, and go back out to a meeting. Additionally, there was the anxiety of Frosty having one of his bad spells. We managed to get him to take a half tablespoon of corn syrup (a tablespoon being the goal), which proved to be sticky, but not half as sticky as tablespoon of honey.
Ilwaco Community Building
I was surprised how few people showed up other than the mayor, Jenna (president of the merchants association) and the members of the commission. The seven? citizens who attended, including us and Marlene, enjoyed an excellent presentation. That is Mayor Gary Forner speaking, in blue, below.
We now have a five day break before next Tuesday’s volunteer crab pot tree decorating session, after which I hope the weather allows us to do one last brief weeding of the Howerton Avenue gardens before Thanksgiving weekend’s tourists arrive. If it doesn’t get done, that will be sort of ok, as they are not terribly weedy.
What is left on the work board looks much more daunting than it actually is. (I was so mad that I had not written down “LB berms”, because I robbed myself of the joy of erasing it.)
Most of those locations on the “final check” list will take no more than an hour of work, and in some cases less than an hour. I estimate that less than eight hours of work, some of it dependent on having a hard frost, stands between us and full staycation and a hiatus (not quite yet) from daily blog posts.
David Jensen office, before and after:
Removing some weedy catmint from a bed by the Don Nisbett art gallery; I put some small, clean pieces back in:
The good mulch (Gardner and Bloome Soil Conditioner and/or Harvest Supreme) that we added to the Time Enough Books curbside garden has been well worthwhile. The garden is full of poppy seedlings, and the plants are now much more vigorous than before.
