13-14 July: hard work and radio

doubling up on some entries so we can get back to garden tours!

Monday, 13 July 2015

Every day but Sunday: a stop at the post office because we don’t get home mail delivery.

our volunteer garden and its monster leaning lily

Basket Case Greenhouse

The Basket Case closed for the season on Sunday.  We stopped by to get some sale perennials, mainly to help out by leaving them fewer plants to water.

Allan’s photo: Shadow, as usual, was in love with our van (which used to be “his”).

Allan’s photo

Long Beach 

Watering the Long Beach street trees and planters was the first order of the day.

Wooden Horse gift shop: that star was $125. We might be in the wrong business.

The Hungry Harbor with Basket Case hanging basket

white nigella (love in a mist) in Fifth Street Park

my audience while doing a bit of weeding in Fifth Street Park

Eryngium ‘Jade Frost’ in Fifth Street Park (with sanguisorba and Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and Nicotiana langsdorfii)

While watering the planter outside the Herb ‘N Legend Smoke Shop, I saw my good friend Bill Clearman working on the entryway.

Our Bill, mixing some goop.

in a planter: Geranium ‘Rozanne’ with bee

Coreopsis ‘Star Cluster’

The city crew was out working hard, too.

I’m pleased with this planter, that was all white yarrow last year.  (The yarrow had been planted by a volunteer and was hard to get rid of.)

white tigridia

white catananche (Cupid’s dart) under a street tree

I like this catananche a lot.

Lilies on the east side of Fifth Street Park

Gunnera in Fifth Street Park (SE quadrant)

yellow tigridia (Mexican shell flower)

Veterans Field…I must find time to deadhead that Salvia ‘May Night’ soon

Veterans Field with Gaura ‘So White’

Catananche caerulea in Veterans Field

Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’ in Veterans Field

Ilwaco 

With Long Beach done, Allan watered the Ilwaco planters and street trees while I watered and weeded at the boatyard garden.  While we were at our house getting the battery for the water trailer, Ed Strange pulled up behind us with my nephew, Jackson.

Allan’s photo

Allan’s photo

Allan’s photo

I long to pull all the poppies…but am letting them go to seed.

Allan’s photo

Allan’s photo

Allan’s photo: A bee snoozing under a daisy petal

Allan’s photo: The darn deer are nibbling the nasturtiums in some of the Ilwaco planters.

Allan’s photos: Don and Jenna were painting at Queen La De Da’s

Allan’s photo: the planter by the fire station

While I chose the plants, Allan is taking care of the Ilwaco planters pretty much all by himself this year and is doing an excellent job of watering and grooming them.

Tuesday, 14 July 2015

I had to get up at 8 AM to go across the river with Garden Tour Nancy for the Diggin’ In the Dirt radio show to promote the upcoming Music in the Gardens Tour.  Morning people will laugh, but that is awfully hard for me.  Allan went back to sleep and woke up at 9:30 to listen to the show.

We’d left extra time for stopping for work being done on the Astoria Megler bridge.

workers way up on the tippy top!!!

KMUN community radio in Astoria

the view over buildings to the Columbia River

My job was to describe the tour gardens, and Nancy’s was to talk about the music and other tour particulars.  I think it went well. Pam Fleming, our friend and the city gardener for Seaside, Oregon, joined us to promote her tour of the Seaside city gardens, which will take place on July 26th.

After the show, we went to breakfast at the Blue Scorcher.  Getting to have breakfast with Pam, whom we do not see often enough, was one of my big motivations for getting up so early.

on the way: poppies

a courtyard

Pam and Nancy outside the Blue Scorcher

Blue Scorcher planter

at the door of the Blue Scorcher

I bypassed delicious treats…

…in favour of a breakfast burrito, and Pam got the quiche.

Blue Scorcher dining

at our table

breakfast burrito

delicious quiche, made sweet by cabbage (we traded bites)

From this delightful (although sleepy) morning, I went home and then to the horror of weeding…

The Long Beach beach approach garden

before…our goal was to get two sections done (out of 13)

before

Allan’s photo

It is such a tough job in this drought.  The weeds are stuck in so firmly.  The best parts of the afternoon:  When a passerby reminisced about her grandma making rose hip jelly, and how it smelled of roses.  And when the dial a ride bus stopped next to us and the doors opened and I said “Have you come to take us away?” and the driver said “The best thing Long Beach ever did for its gardens in town and out here was to hire you two!”  And when a woman asked “Are they edible?” when she was already nibbling on a rose hip.  (Good thing they are).  And when our neighbour Jared walked by with my good dog friend, Rudder.

Allan’s photo: Rudder! (the big black dog, the other one is Yarrow)

This is about as good as we are getting it done.

Allan’s photo: what we are up against

Allan’s photo

after

after

Allan’s photo: I resorted to desperate measures.

the parts where I just got fed up and used the strimmer.

Ilwaco

On the way home, we drove by the port to see if any plants needed watering.  What did I spy but a fingerblighter, a woman in person, caught in the act, picking herself a bouquet of Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’!

Allan’s photo: caught in the act

She was caught red handed as we pulled our van up next to her, and she had the grace to look mortified when I told her to stop.  She said she was sorry.  She said that the Eryngium was “just so unusual.”  Allan said it was an expensive plant.  I said it only blooms once, and that we work hard on the gardens and she was lessening them.  She asked if there was some way we could replant the flower.  (!!!)  I said no there was not. She said “I blame my grandmother because she always picked flowers and I got it from her.”  I could not think fast enough to say that MY grandmother taught me to NOT pick flowers from anyone’s garden, public or private.  As she bicycled away, I felt sorry for her and called “It was your bad luck that we happened to be driving by.”

or, rather, to protect the guilty (Allan’s photo)

a soul-soothing view

watering at Time Enough Books

 

 

 

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1 July: radio, friends, heat

Tuesday, 1 July 2014

my morning

I had to get up early! Before eight AM! My inner clock does not allow me to sleep early, so I had maybe six hours. Nancy arrived with a double iced mocha in hand for me, and I ate a tahini sandwich on the way as had no time for breakfast. The reason was to go to Astoria with Nancy, Stephen, and John to be on the Diggin’ in the Dirt radio show to help promote the July 19th Music in the Gardens tour. Stephen and John’s is one of the ten tour gardens.

KMUN radio is housed here.

Stephen, Nancy, and John

view from the KMUN waiting room

Pam from my favourite local collectors nursery, Back Alley Gardens, joined us for the show to promote her Seaside walking tour which will take place on July 27 (sadly for me, it starts at 8 AM). The organizer of the Astoria garden tour was there also; it’s July 12th and I am very sorry to miss it this year as we will be at the Bloggers Fling in Portland. I wish there was some way I could have a sneak peek at the gardens.

After the show, we all walked a few blocks to have coffee together at the Blue Scorcher Café.

on the way, we saw goats…

a hillside pasture for city goats!

and gnarled old rhodo trunks reminiscent of some of the very old rhodos in Stephen and John’s bayside garden.

walking and looking

My left calf had felt absolutely seized up with pain when I woke briefly at three AM, yet by midmorning had recovered enough that I was able to walk up and down hills in Astoria with not much trouble.

We gazed upon this because Stephen and John are conifer men…one more than the other, I think perhaps.

wild cucumber vine

at the Blue Scorcher

Pam, John, Stephen, Nancy

Pam’s delicious looking brunch (some sort of curry soup); I simply had a chocolate croissant.

On the way back, we happened upon a George Schenkian public garden that I admire very much. Jessica Schlief’s garden that she made by piling soil on top of asphalt to make beds has been here for years.

roses inside an ornate fence

Pam and John. (Stephen and John buy cool plants from her nursery.)

inside

poppy and lily

roses and, I think…feverfew perhaps

bee balm

My favourite ornamental grass, Stipa gigantea

sunflowers

The potted yew was a hit.

garden admiration

John and Stephen

all grown in raised beds atop unbroken asphalt

Alllum schubertii

allium shadow

The day had gotten bright and very hot. Back at KMUN to get the vehicles, I admired a bumper sticker.

I SOOO dislike beach driving except for litter clean up and surf rescue.

As Nancy and I drove back to the Peninsula, she expressed a desire to peek at the very secret house that I had dreamed about on Saturday. So we did. I did not pine for it as much, mostly because I have realized I would have to have a deer fence there, and it has no fencing at all.

Meanwhile I was on the phone with Allan, who informed me that it was very, very hot, that he had been sweating while starting his work day by watering Larry and Robert’s garden, and that I might not want to work. I could feel it, but thought surely we could accomplish our project, which was to weed one of the Long Beach parking lot berms.

I took time to stop at Nancy’s to meet her new chickens, still housed in the living room till their feathers grow in.

very curious

a peek at Nancy’s veg garden

her purple peas

She’s very pleased about these Liberty apples.

allium albopilosum in the flower garden we made there

Allium schubertii

Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’

After the brief garden stroll, I called Allan and said that it was indeed TOO TOO hot, and would he come and get me and we would go home and go back out to work in the evening. After dumping the weeds he had already collected, he came over and we all sat on Nancy and Phil’s porch and drank ice water for awhile…and just as Allan and I were about to depart, a faintly cool breeze wafted from the north and I thought that perhaps we could go back to work after all.

Allan’s morning

This is how hot it was (so unusual for the beach…although seems to be ominously less unusual lately):

He saw this man while driving through Long Beach.

92 F!!

another fellow lounging in the shade by one of our planters.

a before photo of the weedy parking lot (not really a) berm

He began by pruning back the overhanging roses

then tackled the horrible mess in this garden for which we had had not time yet this year.

Our afternoon

After we decided to get back to work despite the heat, we paused at Fifth Street park for a restroom stop and I checked the nearby planters; amazingly, there were still damp enough to not have to be watered yet.

The city crew was mowing, surely glad the temperature had dropped a bit.

I joined Allan in the berm weeding.

Yikes!

I had accidentally packed the wrong homi, the one that is too straight and springy.

I tried the double tool but it did not have enough oomph.

I borrowed Allan’s ho mi that had enough oomph. (Ho Mi, Korean Hand Plow, Zen Weeder, E-Z digger)

weeds!

awful

a nightmare indeed

We had been hinting around that maybe a city parks intern could do this area…and finally it had gotten so bad I could not bear to leave it alone.

certainly an improvement!

The main problem is the soil is tight and difficult, so lots of weed roots were left behind.

a battered looking weeding job

not great at close inspection

with some pockets of weeds that were so daunting we left them there for now

It is…better.

There are some good plants in this garden that may distract people from the rough rootiness at ground level.

Rosa glauca and Stipa gigantea

Rosa glauca and Stipa gigantea

Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’

assorted shrubs

Echinops (Blue Globe Thistle)

Even the horrible phormium

had redeemed itself by putting out a flower.

Across the parking lot, a garden at the Oceanic RV Park was brimming with potted astilbes.

a very nice little garden on the north wall

Home, so tired from such a tedious job and the early morning, I got back to garden tour blogging. I glimpsed from my window that the sky promised a good sunset and then got so absorbed in writing that I forgot to look again. Judy four doors down probably won’t mind that I show you the sunset photos that she posted on Facebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Radio, Radio (Friday with Nancy)

As the garden tour approaches, life gets more pressured.  I have friends visiting my garden also even though it is not on the tour and I want it to look good but our time is limited.  Tonight had two “notes” to put together for the Facebook page (garden descriptions and music schedule) and now I have six or was it seven gardens from the Astoria garden tour to write about.  I am fairly obsessed, though, with trying to follow the quotidian working year, so here we go about last Friday.

July 12:

weekly deadheading and horsetail control of welcome sign

Yellow is said to stop the eye for a second (which fact I learned from Lucy Hardiman) so is good for a commercial roadside garden.

Then while Allan turned on the Sid Snyder beach approach planters I began to water the Long Beach main street planters, hoping to get at least halfway done before a garden tour event intervened.

yellow and yellow

painted sage, California poppy, Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly’

Crazy about Geranium ‘Rozanne’ in the planters, thus will get more so almost every planter has some.

Salvia viridis (painted sage) in front of Home at the Beach

tourist bikes by the Long Beach fifth street restroom

The basket, above, is by Nancy Aust of Basket Case Greenhouse; the rose is ‘Super Dorothy’ from Heirloom Roses.  She does not get powdery mildew like ‘Dorothy Perkins’ rose.

Fifth Street Park, NW quadrant

I worked my way as far north as Marsh’ Free Museum by which time Allan had caught up to me just watering the street tree pocket gardens.  He then had to take over all the watering while I walked down to Nancy’s house to meet her for a trip to Astoria.

approaching Nancy’s garden

Nancy has a very good idea regarding local real estate:  That gardeners should be able to find out from the realtor which lots are best for gardening.  A realtor could specialize in this.  Upon moving to this lot just south of downtown, she found it to be much windier than she expected and harder to grow veg in.  Bayside gardens are much milder for gardening.  Nevertheless, I think she is doing a remarkable job.

Nancy’s veg, looking south

looking north-ish

Her sweet peas are much better than mine….envy!

My sweet peas at home were a fail this year.  I got a few, but the vines are not growing very tall.  The slugs got a lot of them…I was too busy to monitor them.

Nancy’s garlic will be ready at the right time because (unlike me) she planted it on time.

The flower border is coming along slowly…(foreground:  Sanguisorba)

And then, Nancy and I headed to Astoria to talk about the Music in the Gardens tour on KMUN radio.  One can never tell how long the bridge trip will take because of ongoing road work, so we got there early enough to stop at the Astoria food co op.

food co op garden

And then….KMUN.  Despite having a friend, Jeannine Grey, who had a jazz show on this community station, I had never looked closely at the building and had no idea it is so lovely.

KMUN

inside was plush

fireside

The view from the KMUN house is spectacular; no wonder Jeannine liked going there so much.

the view of the Columbia River

Our little talk went well.   Many years ago I had an FCC license to work on a radio show (“Surviving in the Patriarchy”) on KRAB community radio in Seattle.  Still, just before our interview today I thought I would freeze up, but we managed to remain coherent as we spoke about the Music in the Gardens tour.

There was no time for lollygagging in Astoria so back to the Peninsula we went.  Nancy’s car is a little higher off the ground than Allan’s, so my bridge phobia was not as bad as usual.

In Long Beach, we did a walk through of the Columbia Pacific Farmer’s Market on Veteran’s Field.  For me, that did count as lollygagging, because Allan was still working on the Long Beach watering.

tomato plants at the market

jello mold of sedums

This market, every Friday in the late afternoon to early evening, is growing larger.  What a nice place for people coming into town to buy some fresh food for their beach cabins.

strawberries

flowers

Two of the Starvation Alley folks are our next door neighbours.

Starvation Alley’s goal is to grow organic cranberries, which is more unusual than you might think.

Hrm, clearly I should have harvested my kale when younger….

I read on Facebook that the chicken had to do with “Chicken Poop Bingo”.  That’s all I know about that.

shoppers with flowers

I wish I had tried some of that chocolate.  Sometimes I am so busy taking photos I don’t stop to actually participate.

I did buy a cupcake for me and one for Allan at this booth:

Wholesome Hearth Bakery

I wish I had tried these as well!

Of course for me, a lot of my thoughts go to our gardens as they relate to various events.

flowers with music

Veterans Field garden and market

OleBob’s booth (from the Port of Ilwaco)

Enough dillydallying at the market…I joined Allan and we went to the Bolstadt approach to bucket water the planters.  I had asked if the city crew could do this with their new water truck, but we had to check…and the planters were dry.

Allan bucket watering

In the garden, the Gaura ‘Whirling Butterflies’ has begun to bloom:

This plant always gets comments and questions.

Bolstadt approach garden, looking east

work intermission:  Allan later shared with me a little lollygagging of his own, as I had asked him to take some photos of City Sandsations’ progress on their sculptures by Veterans Field.  Here they are along with his photos of the market.  Our work life is deeply affected by the round of festivals that begins in the spring and continues most weekends till mid-September, so we might as well enjoy and share what we see.

After our watering and light weeding session on the beach approach, we watered the curbside gardens along Howerton at the Port of Ilwaco.

Gaura at the port

I weeded the port office garden.

Eryngium and Lavender on Howerton

And then…home to water in the last light of day.

home at last

poppies at home

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12 December 2007 — a storm known as The Monster

Finally the storm came, and all the skeptics must have been sorry that they did not stock up ahead of time.  It lasted three long days of winds up to 140 up in the hills and 85 mph whipping through the towns. Downtown Astoria’s businesses lost windows, sucked out by the vacuum of the wind, and all over Northwest Oregon and our Peninsula groves of trees splintered and toppled, roofs and siding blew off, and power went out for four to seven days.  In our case, four was bad enough.  I especially pined for the internet.  Until the storm finally ceased and the tiresome roaring winds died down, it was too dangerous to go out and check on the damage.  We were in a land of mystery, cut off from the outside world with neither landline nor cell telephone service and all the roads in and out blocked by fallen trees.  KMUN radio station in Astoria kept broadcasting with a generator but had no news of our side of the river because no one could cross the bridge.  I read the new Dick Francis by a good lantern flashlight and grimly waited it out, expecting one of the tall trees that lean over our house to fall on us at any moment.

When finally we emerged, the damage was impressive.   I felt kind of vulture-like taking photos of people’s woeful upended fences and trees.  Our friend J9 and Jill had lived in New Orleans and told us they had found it worse than southern hurricanes, as it lasted for such a long time.

trees down at Seaview Solstice house

At Solstice House, three large trees came down perfectly lined up to miss the house and the fence.

At Sea Nest, the driftwood temple which my former partner, Robert, built some years ago had imploded inward, and at the Tinker House near Jo’s garden, the glass of the patio shelter shattered.  (Allan repaired the temple but was not able to re-incorporate all the pieces because of breakage and splintering.)

by Jo’s garden

Jo’s fence and garden took a beating, and broken styrofoam bits had been swirled out a neighbour’s storage shed and scattered everywhere like snowdrifts.  Other neighbours will have some sawing to do because of a tree down over their stairway.

Along Sandridge Road on the Willapa Bay side of the Peninsula, entire groves of trees were mangled and splintered into heaps.  Along all the roads we saw this, but nowhere as dramatically as around 220th and Sandridge.

trees down along Sandridge Road

We visited all of our gardens, and other than the temple at Seanest found little heartbreaking damage.  Two clients and friends had chain link fences yanked high into the air by massive fallen tree rootballs.  Laurie’s house was deserted, the battery backup sadly bleating while the she and her dogs and horses were all gone to more friendly climes, perhaps.  [Later she told me they had loaded the horses up and driven to somewhere safer …I seem to recall she might have taken the horses to The Red Barn …when she saw that the sky was a strange colour, almost orange, and truly believed the storm would be serious.]  Denny at KBC was forlorn and lonely because Mary was stranded up in Silverdale and could not drive back for three days.,,nor could he get any word to her that the cabins had not blown away.  We found him   (he who had been skeptical) ruefully burning downed timber.  The fish he had caught in Alaska in early summer had thawed in the power outage.   Later we learned Seattle news had had very little coverage of the storm, so Mary was unable to get much news.  Our friend J9 had a tree down on a power line, and she and Jill were without power for days longer than we were.  Allan, having cleverly filled the gas tank the day before, had enough fuel to motor all over the Pensinsula till the pumps were working again, so rather than begin our staycation as planned we spent the next week picking up debris and propping the plants back upright again. I am grateful for Allan’s childhood camping skills which enabled us to have hot coffee and warm meals! I would have been chewing raw coffee beans. Which reminds me, you cannot grind coffee beans without electricity, so remember to grind them the night before the storm.  Fortunately, when the local store opened with a generator we were able to get some ground beans (and more chocolate).  By the second day, the store was well picked over and had one loaf of bread on the shelf and was giving away free melted ice cream.  Allan took three quarts and, I believe, managed to eat two of them!

Update, 2015: For more photos of storm damage, Google “Great Coastal Gale”.  A particularly dramatic story is about the Uppertown Net Loft art studio in Astoria.  Another good article covering the storm is in the local paper, the Chinook Observer. A few days after the storm, we drove through the Surf Pines beach-side neighbourhood near Gearhart, Oregon.  Locals were now calling it Surf Pine because of all the trees down.  The skyline of Astoria changed as groves of trees on the ridge over town had been felled by the storm.

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