Tuesday, 19 November 2019
I’d had two night of insomnia and simply could not get up early (well, early for us) and go down to volunteer with Allan at the crab pot tree.
On the way, he saw the Ilwaco city crew putting up lights.

Fortunately, I woke up and was breakfasting when he came home to get some tools and so I was able to join him and take some photos. (That and making an album for Discover Ilwaco was the extent of my volunteering, though. I did not even tie one zip tie for the lights.)
Port of Ilwaco

Lola (left) and a friend decorating the crab pot snowman
We have known Lynette (Lola) for years, since way back when she was the manager of the Anchorage Cottages. Now she writes for a living and will read her Coastal Christmas poem at the Crab Pot event.

Don Nisbett (left) stringing lights

Allan to the far left


Allan’s photo
A feast of donuts and maple bars (and coffee!) was on hand for the volunteers. Charity had a mishap with her maple bar.



Allan’s photos
Fortunately, there were still some replacement pastries.

view from the crab pot tree (Allan’s photo)
Something new this year is a “black cod pot” tree to the south of the port office.

Mark from the port crew (boatyard manager) testing the electrics by the port office

Our Jenna to the left of the black cod pot tree

I think some more height is going to be added with more pots.

I had to check the nearby port office garden and the cosmos that refuse to die.

The port office staff don’t want me to pull them, not even if they are still blooming at crab pot tree time, which is…..
I walked with Jenna back down to the big tree, where light stringing was still going on.

Jenna and a gal from the Ilwaco Freedom Market repaired to bay 3 of the boatyard to spray paint some floats for decoration. I followed and found a couple of weeds to pull on the way.

Allan’s telephoto

in Bay 3

a smart way to keep spray paint in its place

local Girls Scouts had decorated the floats
Jenna asked me if I wanted to paint a float (“for Tangly Cottage”). Feeling exhausted from insomnia, I demurred.
Earlier, walking by the westernmost garden bed on the way to the port office, I had been appalled at its sheets of creeping sorrel in a bed whose soil level was unattractively low. I thought then, “If only I had some more mulch.”
While Allan kept volunteering, I dragged myself and a bucket and tools to that bed with the intention of weeding…but just as I began, I saw a text from Julez of Salt Hotel offering us part of a pile of “bark mulch”. I envisioned hideous red bark…and then saw the pile on the parking lot of Skywater Gallery, next to Salt.

lovely black gold!
I accepted the offer with alacrity and, after calling Allan to come help, started weeding in hasty preparation.

a mess of weeds

sorrel and pink flowering strawberries (the latter is ok here)
As Allan got ready, two other trucks showed up. Would there be a battle for the mulch? No…We’d been offered half of it, and Kirk took about a third, and Todd, one of the Salt staffers, helped wheelbarrow loads over to our garden beds.

Allan’s photo

Todd and Allan


after
Although we got many buckets of weeds, some weedy sins are buried under that mulch. I hope they stay buried till early 2020.


With the soil level raised, the bed looks so much better.
We went home for more buckets. Upon our return to do more fall clean up at the port, the dark sky to the east turned into a light rain.

While I did not mind going back home as it was past three, the weather did fool us and got nice again shortly. We were not about to go back out.
Allan picked up many windfall apples, just to go in the compost.

If only it were not such a long journey to Lezlie’s house, her crows could have them. In our garden, I want to avoid attracting raccoons. I’ll save them for awhile in case she gets out the old mule and buckboard and comes to town.

On the porch, I had seen a pretty be-ribboned gift bag. In today’s rushing about, I had not had time to open it. When I did, I found a Hello Kitty wind chime made from a tin and cutlery.


It wasn’t from Jenna…it wasn’t from MaryBeth…so who? Who knows I like Hello Kitty? I know that Montana Mary isn’t in town, so who? I love it, so thank you to whoever it was, and please confess.
When I sat down to write blog posts, I churned ’em out, six in a row, which leaves my next week of evenings open for reading.
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