August 11, 2013
I got up early, invigorated by the idea of tour day, and I do mean at about 8 AM. The night before, I had made tabouli which I dressed up with all sorts of vegetables from my garden: cucumber, tomatoes, chives, cilantro on the side, and edible flowers: Calendula, tuberous begonia, borage, chive flowers. We had some lemon water to offer, and Allan had bought some animal crackers but forgot to put them out. Brownies (and Allan’s favourite, red licorice) did not seem quite right to offer on a serious and healthy edible garden tour.
a welcoming table
I arranged some samples of edible flowers on plates, an idea I swiped from last year’s edible tour at Lisa Mattfield’s Homewood garden.
edible flowers
On the shed wall across from the tabouli table:
Let’s see, what’s edible? Fuchsia flowers, and a Stevia to the right
The beautiful wall vase was made by my friend Sheila, who brought it to me when she came from Oregon for the Music in the Gardens tour.
wall vase
In the remaining time before noon, I rushed around pulling a few more weeds and wishing again that we had run the string trimmer around the garden beds…
I thought Pam Fleming from my favourite local collectors’ nursery, Back Alley Gardens in Gearhart, might come and was feeling the garden was not at its required tour perfection…
I put out some of my favourite garden books, this time mostly ones with an edible theme (Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest, The Bountiful Container). Even though it is purely ornamental, I did simply have to put out my very favourite garden book, Shocking Beauty by Thomas Hobbs. And I hung at the gate a print of the cover of the Beverly Nichols’ book, Garden Open Today.
garden open today!
My garden was looking much more ornamental than edible….
garden boat (The “Ann Lovejoy”) with cosmos and elephant garlic.
But I had gone to great effort to grow salad greens in containers all over the garden.
salad containers in background
It really is an ornamental garden, though; there is just no denying that. Lisa really had wanted us to be on the tour, and I did my best…
In the greenhouse, I had tomatoes from The Planter Box, The Basket Case, and the River Rock Farm booth at Long Beach’s Columbia Pacific Farmers Market.
in the greenhouse
lavender as one enters the back yard
encouragement to smell scented geraniums, etc
laundry lines and raspberries
my grandma’s embroidered pillowcases
one of four corn plants, and potatoes on the debris pile
veg box
To have more edibles with little open ground available, I had planted some drawers with autumn crops of kale, and labeled them. Kale is ornamental as well as edible. I could have just labeled them and not even planted the seeds! But the seeds are in there, I guarantee it.
Let the tour begin!!
Local jobbing gardener Diana Canto and her dog Lucy were first to arrive just after the tour start time of noon. Diana is the gardener who created the Bristol garden, featured on the Music in the Gardens tour.
Diana and Lucy
Soon after, Nancy (Music in the Gardens tour organizer) and Phil Allen arrived.
Phil, Nancy, Lucy, Diana
Phil, Nancy, Diana, Lucy, and I
in the distance, tour guests
Our friend Sarah Sloane, local author (of the charming children’s book The Marble Game) and topiary artist, came early. I showed her the topiary that she gave me last year and said “I have been clipping on him”. “Hand me the scissors!” she said, and went to work.
Sarah Sloane
More people came, in fact we had quite a rush of about 18 people in the first hour and fifteen minutes!
tour guests as Sarah clips the topiary bird
Ann Gaddy came to see the garden. I was thrilled to meet her. Her father, Pete Hanner, is the one who told the story about my garden at my neighbour, Nora’s, funeral earlier this year… Ann intends to bring Pete sometime soon, and I look forward to seeing him again.
enjoying Ann’s company
We had “met” on Facebook but not in person before this day. Note Frosty, above, in the background watching from his cat perch.
Sarah, me, and Ann
One man turned out to be very interested in biochar. I told him he and Jim Karnofski would have a lot to talk about, and he said he was going to Jim and Vera’s Biocharm Farm next. He had been to a national bochar conference of some sort recently. I hope he and Jim had a great time having a discussion on the subject. As Mr. Tootlepedal (one of my two favourite bloggers of all time, the other being Mary Ruston of Moosey’s Country Garden) commented on my photos of Jim and Vera’s veg, “A very good advertisement for his methods.”
Another man introduced himself as from Astoria. In conversation, I realized he had had his garden on the Astoria garden tour before, and I had been there. It is in this blog entry as the Wigutoff garden, a lovely front garden that leads up to a deck with a Columbia River view, and had more edibles than I do, as I recall. Unfortunately it was written when I used smaller photos on my blog (and before my great computer crash where I lost all original photos from 2010-12). (Yes, I have a better back up system now!)
I believe this is Mr. Wigutoff from Astoria.
I have no idea why there is a corkscrew next to The Intelligent Gardener book. I swear I was not boozing during the garden tour! I have my phone out because am looking up Mr. Wigutoff’s garden on my blog. (Allan tells me the corkscrew was to open his own bottle of Mexican soda pop.)
A young couple passing by on the street had asked early in the tour (which began at noon) if they could come in just to see our garden. They had sailed down from Alaska in their boat and were docked at the marina. Of course, we said yes. They wandered appreciatively through the entire garden and I think they stayed for over an hour.
I showed the woman the way the seeds of the Impatiens balsamina jump when you touch a ripe pod (which is why it’s common name is Touch Me Not and why it is a class 2 noxious weed….ooops).
She’s about to test out a seedpod.
laughter as it pops
Something about her smile and her voice convinced me I had met her before, but that was impossible. She must have strongly reminded me of someone. Her partner took a great interest in the cats.
Frosty loved the attention.
I wish them both smooth sailing and hope touring our garden gave them a fond memory of Ilwaco.
Debbie Haugsten came with her friend Charlene. They arrived at the peak of the early guests, so we did not have time to visit. Later, due to my face blindness, I thought maybe she had been with Helen Westbrook (whose fabulous Astoria garden I like to visit) but Debbie helped me sort it out later….
Debbie and Charlene
The two Colleens from Peninsula Landscape Supply arrived and stayed for awhile.
Sarah and Colleen
Not only was I happy to see them but I also was glad they could meet Sarah. I think the topiaries would be a great addition to the stock at Colleen’s garden center.
And then, after they left, there was….no one else! Sarah kept clipping the topiary as we visited on the patio. Allan got discouraged after awhile and put the tabouli salad away. He made us a lunch of chili and mandarin oranges (a house specialty that Sarah enjoyed). After awhile, thank goodness, Judy came from her garden four doors down to see how the tour was going and kept us company for awhile.
Allan noticed that Sarah’s dogs were in the car, so we invited them both in.
patiently waiting
Judy loves little dogs. They provided much entertainment as we continued to wait and marvel at the lack of tour guests. These two dogs won the obedience trial at the Doggie Olympic Games in Long Beach earlier this year and they performed some cute tricks for us.
They liked Judy very much!
The tour was due to end at five; Sarah and Judy had left by about four. The bird was re-shaped to Sarah’s satisfaction.
an excellent bird
I have to admit that I was kind of let down when my friends had departed. I did not expect the 500 people who had come through on Music in the Gardens tour 2012, but I was hoping for at least 50! I walked through the garden taking some photos of it while it was in such excellent condition (and pulled a few more weeds on the way).
That one spot of lawn always gets brown.
archway to back garden with Clematis ‘Etoile Violette’
entering the back garden….This is where folks always exclaim they did not know it was so big.
elephant garlic
Leycesteria ‘Golden Lanterns’
I had been worried all the lilies would be done by tour day, but there were still plenty of them.
lilies
Eryngium and lilies
more lilies
afternoon light on the garden boat
blue Agastache (hyssop) and Eupatorium (Joe Pye Weed)
Verbascum ‘Eleanor’s Blush’
Geranium ‘Rozanne’ river from the side
my flock of chickens by the garden boat
Sheesh, not only is my garden not full of edibles, but I don’t even have real chickens!
more Agastache because I love them.
by the bogsy wood, many empty chairs…
by the edge of the bogsy wood….Hey, salmonberry groves have edible berries!
weeded woodsy edge with before photos clipped to branches
into the bogsy wood at the south end of the lot
same area as above in November 2010
looking north from the bogsy wood
looking west
Gunnera
salmonberry tunnel
a well weeded bogsy wood area
Oh well, it IS nice to have the garden almost perfect on occasion!
fairy door with market basket; the fairies have gathered their “edibles”
another fairy dwelling
Judy’s son said the fairies do not need stairs because they can fly. But they DO need stairs for their pet frogs.
from the bridge over the swale, looking west
fish in the well weeded swale
south edge, inside fence, looking east. The property goes further south outside the fence.
Emerging from the bogsy wood, I photographed my way up the west side path.
looking north
beside the shade garden
blue bottle hanger from The Natural Nook in Gearhart
Fuchsia magellanica and purple trunks of old camellia
before photo (with no garden) of the camellia which is now just purple painted trunks . Nov 2010
looking back south
walking north into the sun
And then….JOY! Another garden guest arrived! She was a member of The Mozart Chicks quintet who had performed at Pink Poppy Farm on Music in the Gardens tour day and had reprised their performance with a trio during the edible tour!
a musician in our garden
I walked around with her, and as she left, Pam and Kathy from Back Alley Gardens and The Natural Nook in Gearhart arrived. More joy. I really had been rather glum about having only nineteen people so far (and pretty much all of them in the first hour with three hours in between having no new arrivals).
Pam Fleming and Kathy Cates
We walked all around every inch of the garden, which was most satisfactory and made my day. Pam told us that she and Kathy had not known where our street, which is one block south of the main drag through Ilwaco, was. I am so used to people having a GPS that I never thought to make sure the program had more specific directions. Because of their determination to visit us, they turned back when they realized they were heading east out of Ilwaco. But what was worse was that Adelaide’s Coffee in Ocean Park, the northernmost ticket sales point, had been CLOSED. CLOSED on Sunday? On tour day??? Which is when most people buy tickets??? When their hours say they are OPEN on Sundays? Why had they agreed to sell tickets at all???? I found out later that they had told Lisa, the tour organizer, a few days before that they would be closed that day. Whatever the emergency was, if there was one, my mind is still boggled that this happened. How many other people might have tried to buy tickets and then given up and done something else with their day?
Because of this fiasco and having to drive back south to buy tickets at Jimella and Nanci’s Café in Klipsan, the only two gardens that Pam and Kathy visited other than ours was Pink Poppy Farm and the Millner Garden. They loved Pink Poppy Farm…who wouldn’t? and Pam raved about a pink drink with Shiso (Perilla, a Japanese herb)….somehow the Shisho made the drink a gorgeous pink colour. Then they went to the Millner garden at the Planter Box. Pam was so taken with Ray Millner’s talk about the health benefits of his garden that she had made a movie of him with her iPad to show to Back Alley plantswoman Prissy.
Pam taking an iPad photo
We sat in the patio and talking about gardening, especially public gardening. (Pam does the gorgeous Seaside, Oregon gardens and I have admired her work for years.) Allan brought the tabouli salad back out. Time passed. Pam played us a bit of the video of Ray Millner. They were thinking of stopping by Painted Lady Lavender Farm for the very end of the Beach Bellydance Festival but we kept nattering on. (Last year the festival was beautiful and I was sorry to have missed it this year.) By the time they departed, they decided to skip the festival. On the way out, we all had a good look at Allan’s garden, especially his unidentified mystery fern.
Kathy and the mystery fern
One more guest wanted to come in, but by now the tour was over….
Onyx from next door
…except for Vera and Jim Karnofski who came up from Biocharm Farm to bring us the big tour sign to return to Lisa the next day. We walked all around with them, and they took some tabouli with them to eat later.
I had emailed Nancy Allen to bemoan we had only had 23 people. She responded: “Phil told me I shouldn’t tell you Andrea had 130” [at the Patten edible garden]. I believed it for about two minutes and thought that many many people had been unable to find our address! It tied in with Pam and Kathy having told me that they heard the Pink Poppy Farm-ers were surprised they had so many people. But it turned out that the 27 people that they did get seemed to them like quite a few for the edible tour (that only got 20 people in 2012!)
This tour needs a better attendance, especially since it is a benefit for the food bank. We have the Facebook page now, and had some good publicity in both the Chinook Observer (local weekly paper) and the Daily Astorian. Next year we need to get a promo on the public radio. The tickets are extremely reasonable: $7 or 5 cans of food for the food bank. I hope it is just not that people (like me) are more interested in purely ornamental garden tours….but I won’t pass up the chance to tour any kind of garden.
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