Aug 17: some gardens and some music

August 17, 2013

I THOUGHT we had the day off and enjoyed a bit of time in our own garden….

BLACK Centaurea montana in front garden

..and then I realized…horrors!…we had forgotten to deadhead at the Kite Museum yesterday, and Kite Festival guests and vendors would be starting to arrive on Sunday.

So off we went to work.

Kite garden is tidy but unexciting…

Allan photographed a sculpture on the lawn that would be auctioned off at the kite festival banquet.

The horizontals made a wind noise…

Since we had had to go out anyway, we stopped by the Basket Case to pick up some more old potting soil for our compost pile.

At The Basket Case

an annual coreopsis (which was supposed to be pink!)

Back in Ilwaco, I walked down to the Saturday Market for the weekly Discover Ilwaco photo session. I must admit I had gotten burned out on the weekly session because I was so involved in garden tour prep and touring. Allan had filled in for me a couple of Saturdays and Tom Hornbuckle had saved the day with some photos on the week when both Allan and I were off touring Gearhart gardens.

On the way, I passed the lost garden half a block away. The big hydrangea by Advent Street was in full blooms.

And it looked like some serious pruning might be going on….and the lawn, over a foot long last time I had noticed it this summer, had been roughly mowed.

looking west from Advent

chopped branches

I hope it doesn’t get too cleared out and lose its mysterious magic!

Here are some garden related photos from the day’s Ilwaco Saturday Market:

peaches

lilies

And with that, it’s time for Blues and Seafood‘s second day, this time started at 3:30 in the afternoon with a very bluesy band. I took photos and then went home till 5:15 when I returned for the amazing Strange Tones.

What the Strange Tones are doing at a blues festival, I don’t quite know. They are more rockabilly and have a backstory of being “sonic crime fighters” (thus they call their music Crime-a-billy). That is why you will see their two woman dance troupe, the Volcano Vixens, wielding spy glasses and toy guns. I simply adore this band.

Guitar Julie and Andy Strange

Guitar Julie and The Volcano Vixens (Jenny Hauser and Susan Kane)

We posted all our photos to Discover Ilwaco and were well chuffed when the band members liked them. Julie Strange herself commented about the above photo, “It’s nice to be so well protected while playing guitar!”

The Volcano Vixens

Surburban Slim, Guitar Julie, Andy Strange

The dancers moved through the audience with magnifying glasses.

Surburban Slim and Julie

I like the number where they bring out parasols because it always makes for fun photos.

This song also involved amusing jungle noises.

parasols, photos by Allan

parasol choreography

You can watch a video of this song, complete with parasols, here.

back to the Crime-a-billy theme, photo by Allan

flamboyant dresses

Allan’s photo

Allan and I covering two angles.

Port of Ilwaco Manager Jim Neva, clearly a big fan.

Jim is also a big fan and supporter of landscaping and gardens at the Port.

What could equal the Strange Tones performance? None but The Norman Sylvester Band, also from Portland.

Norman Sylvester and Rob Shoemaker

Norman hails from Lousiana but has been playing in Portland, Oregon, since the mid 80s.

I loved it that LadyKat True Blue and Maggie Kitson, who had sung in The Heartbreakers the night before, were at the front of the audience enjoying the show.

very bluesy but in a way that I like: rhythm and blues

a gorgeous voice

I didn’t like the green tone that the lights cast sometimes, so changed some of those photos to sepia. It definitely suits the old fashioned Louisiana feel.

I think it especially suits the bassist who looks like he stepped out of another time.

“Don’t let the devil ride, because if you let him ride, he’s gonna want to drive.”

Norman standing tall

Two years ago, Norman performed “People Get Ready” and I hope not to forget how it moved me. He has not played it here since and I wish he would. Even without it, I had a great time listening to all the other songs.

Ilwaco can dance

And then, an intermission.

moon over the food court

The next band was headed by Coco Montoya who I guess is a famous blues guy. I took band photos for the page and then went outside and sat with a local acquaintance. The music was pleasant in the background while we sat and solved the problems of the world for awhile, or at least of our local world.

moon over the port marina

I was fairly pleased with the photos taken by my somewhat new camera, and was home with Allan downloading and editing and uploading them to the Ilwaco page until almost three in the morning, because I don’t like to fall behind on such things (as I have done with this blog!)

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Aug 16: gardening Blues

August 16, 2013

Here’s the thing:  The Howerton Street curbside gardens at the port, right by the Ilwaco Pavilion where the Blues and Seafood tent would be set up, have never officially been given into our care.  But they ARE on Port property and they looked just dreadful for a big event, so we decided we had to do something about it!  The morning was hot, so hot I had to take little breaks out of the sun while Allan soldiered on.

one of the gardens, before, looking east

after, looking east

the other garden before, looking west

after

Meanwhile, the Blues and Seafood tent was being erected.

tent going up between Ilwaco pavilion and the bank building

Now, I am not going to name and shame the bank, which used to be a job of ours, but my gosh, this was just not very good for a garden right by a big event!

so weedy

They had had their landscape maintenance person (who is a friend of mine, and is just doing what they want done) chop the shrubs, as usual.  The wrong shrubs were planted here originally, and they get too tall, but I certainly would not have them hacked right before an event for which one wants the town to look good.

I would, if I were in charge, just have those shrubs removed completely rather than have to prune them this harshly.

call Plant Amnesty!

I quit the job because the budget was not big enough to do it the way it deserved to be done and still make a decent hourly wage, so that I had ended up working for free to get weeding done and nice pruning that took extra time.  The catalyst for actually quitting was a breaking point of having used all the hours for the month and then having to pick up dozens of styrofoam pellets out of the grassy bioswale next to the building.  Twice.

Last spring, I was so bothered by the way it looks now that I actually made a bid (and I generally do NOT bid) to get the job back when my friend was thinking of quitting it.  I never got a reply to the bid even after being asked to provide one, but the grapevine told me someone there thinks I am “difficult to work with.”  Well, I suppose I am because I won’t do a job the wrong way if I know better.  The only reason I wanted the job back was because it gives me the blues to see it looking so bad.  This is not sour grapes:  By now it has gotten so weedy that I would not want to be the one to try to bring it back to goodness, not on the most lavish budget.

That was it for our Ilwaco work of the day:  cleaning up by the Blues tent and brooding about the landscape next door.

After that, we deadheaded the welcome sign in Long Beach….

I like the way the Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly’ mimics the round yellow sun.

We were under self imposed pressure to get the days work done in order to get back to the Blues event (by 6 PM) to take photos for the Discover Ilwaco Facebook page.

deadheading in the Fifth Street Park

lilies in the Fifth Street park

I have NO idea how the much-hated-by-me orange montbretia got into the park.  I didn’t want to make a mess by pulling it, but it has got to go pretty soon!

a sneaky thug behind the Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’

I remember in olden days when I could not bear to throw plants away, I would bring orange montbretia home and plant it alongside the road at my old house…and then spent years unsuccessfully trying to get rid of it to plant something better.

Eryngium ‘Jade Frost’ still has the blues!

Despite our hurried feeling, we made a quick stop at the Humane Society.  Our oldest cat, Maddy, disappeared around the Fourth of July and we still hoped she might appear as a stray…

South Pacific County Humane Society

I told myself she may have found a happy home where she can be the only cat, She Who Hates All Other Cats.

Next, the Anchorage Cottages, where I was reminded again of why I don’t like to grow Lady’s Mantle even though I once found it so charming.

that awkward unladylike stage

While I’m singing the blues about annoying plants, how about Stella D’Oro daylily?  It has got to go, and will be ousted in the fall.

Stella is mostly unattractive and I do not like her flowers, so there!

After the Anchorage, we simply had to deadhead at Andersen’s RV Park.

Payson Hall takes over an hour to deadhead nowadays and it is quite hot to work against the white building.

the lingering red poppies and a couple of Men

Getting home in time to water the greenhouse tomatoes was a big rush, but we made it.  The little yellow/orange tomatoes (I have several kinds that colour, and few little red ones) are cute and sweet…

but they are so many that they are splitting.  Are they still good to eat when they do this?

Is this safe to eat, I wonder?

When I heard the first notes of music from the Blues tent, I walked on down….one of the advantages of living a block away.

On the way, I saw that the formerly pretty garden at Grays Harbour College’s Ilwaco campus has been whacked to the ground.  Apparently, it had gotten so weedy that no one wanted to tackle it.  Once upon a time it was quite nice with Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and kinnickinnick.

whacked to the ground

You can see in this photo from the GHC website that it started out with gardening promise…

On the other side of the street, the Hawaiian shaved ice booth was poised for the Saturday Market…

I remember when this was set up permanently on a lot on downtown Long Beach and because of the “old town” zoning rules, it had its lower body covered with cedar shakes!

Now for the blues….

Robin Gibson Band…looking very bluesy.

The problem is that I don’t like blues, not straight ahead, blues harp and guitar gonna take the train outta town cos my woman done me wrong type blues.  That is probably why I loved punk rock because it had little bluesiness in it.  At the same time, though, I adored rhythm and blues…the more melodic and (to me) soulful blues that would be personified later in the evening by the women singers of The Heartbreakers.  So I went home after taking a good set of photos of the first blues band and listened for the sound of a woman’s voice.  About two hours later, the unmistakable soul sound soared over the air and I hustled back down for the Heartbreakers.

Mary McPage

Lady Kat True Blue

LadyKat…she is amazing

Rae Gordon in blue

What a voice, what a smile!

Lucy Hammond

Timmer Blakely, Lucy Hammond, Bonnie Lee Bluestone

Maggie Kitson

LadyA

LadyA

LadyA spoke of her involvement in United by Music, a program “designed for talented people with intellectual and physical disabilities to learn and play blues music live on stage with professional musicians for general audiences” and asked us to spread the word about it.

all together singing “Amazing Grace”

Meanwhile, there were connections to our gardening life all around the Blues and Seafood area.  The flowers for the food area were provided by River Rock Farm, whose owner, Kim, has the fabulous Greutter garden in Ocean Park.

Kim’s dahlias

Kim in stripes, and in the background, our garden client Diane

Diane of Diane’s garden

Jet, wife of Jim (Port Manager) Niva, and Marie and Randy Powell of Shoalwater Cove Gallery

center, in red: Karla of Time Enough Books and her sister Kathy provide oysters

more dahlias

And outside, the view of the marina and the sound of the music.

Tomorrow would be a day off with more of the same starting in the mid-afternoon.

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