1 May: 2 nurseries, 2 jobs

Wednesday, 1 May 2024

The Planter Box

We went to buy mulch, and I found some irresistible plants. Allan took photos.

Teresa showed us a bird nest in a pot, protected by hydrangea stems and flowers from the plant being bought. The birds had already fledged.

Basket Case Greenhouse

I was scoping out what they had for future reference, but of course bought some plants. Allan again took some photos.

Diane’s garden

We weeded and added some mulch and a few plants to the septic vault garden.

I had a nice view through the next door trees of a horse.

I weeded and deadheaded the container area.

Last year, Van Engelen mistakenly sent unnamed tulips instead of white and blue hyacinths. They did not charge for them because of the error. They turned out to be parrot tulips that don’t stand up well here to rain.

At least they were free!

Allan weeded along the road and planted three more clumps of sweet peas that I had seeded in pots this spring. We will add some more plants this month. We want to make it extra good because this might be our last year at this job, as we will both be over 70 next year. But I don’t know if I can tear myself away from our animals friends on these jobs! White flowers are a spectacular Crambe maritima.

Although Diane and her dog Holly were not home, Bentley showed up from next door for his biscuit.

This time, I had a big biscuit for him instead of the new small ones that disappointed him last week. But right after this photo was taken, his young housemate Quinn stole the biscuit and ran off with it. Being old and slightly befuddled, Bentley turned down a replacement biscuit and sadly wandered off.

I tried to get him to take another biscuit but he would have none of it.

The Red Barn

Allan walked through the barn to put our bill in the drop box and said hello to a horse.

Bentley showed up again, and this time took a biscuit and wandered off to bury it. He always buries them. Later, after we had weeded the little garden (oops, all we photographed was animals!), one of Bentley’s human friends said to him, ‘You just buried something!” We wondered how she knew, and later realized it was because his snout was dirty from digging the bone into the sandy pastureland soil!

I guess you can tell that the garden in mid spring is not as showy as the animals. (We haven’t seen Cosmo the barn cat for two weeks; we inquired, and he was probably napping in the barn loft.)

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7 March: cat and dog jobs

Thursday, 7 March 2024

Zinc lounged in the warm morning sun as we left for work.

The Red Barn

We made the first visit to the Red Barn this year and were happy to see barn cat Cosmo. It had been over three months since we last petted him!

He checked out our trailer and the inside of the van.

There is a new pony named Buttercup.

Oh, and a garden. We cut back the plants we had left standing over winter and weeded the little garden.

Holly came running for her first biscuit from us in over three months.

Of course, no one had given her a biscuit in all that time. Diane emerged from the barn and we had a chat about life, cats, and her garden.

Diane’s garden

Next door at her house, Holly got another biscuit. She had to be put on the rope so she wouldn’t follow me out to the road.

Trimming this hydrangea was first on my agenda…

…then cutting back a couple of sword ferns and trimming the Stipa gigantea in the driveway entry bed.

Allan cut back plants in the roadside bed, which the lawn guy had mulched over the winter. The picket fence had been freshly painted.

Crambe maritima (sea kale)

I weeded the back yard containers. The ones in the shade were frozen solid when we started after noon, but by three, they had thawed enough to pull shotweed, and I had changed from a flannel to a cotton shirt. I weeded and cut back around the edges of the septic vault garden, and after finishing with the roadside, Allan did the middle section which requires climbing up on top.

From Diane’s gate, we had a look for the new pony in the field between her yard and the Red Barn. Buttercup was on the other side of the pasture. The barrel racing horse said hello.

Now we are done with work for a week or so. We might go trim santolinas at three Ilwaco gardens on a nice day.

The work board tonight:

at home

These two!

I got a shipment of six plants from Forest Farm. Their packaging includes some thick tape. Allan cut down the box for me to make unpacking easier. I have quite a collection stashed in a sheltered corner of Alicia’s patio. I need two nice days at home to find time to plant them, but will probably only have one, before rain, which will have to be devoted to spring cleanup before rain returns.

I chopped and added today’s garden clippings to compost bin four.

Allan string trimmed the Norwood front lawn but ran out of steam before mowing in the last hour of daylight.

Stray cat Voxie came meowing for his early supper. (He had had breakfast, of course, and ate every bite of both meals. His flanks have a little meat on them now instead of being just flat.) Both meals came with petting, and tonight he got petted twice, including a belly rub.

Tomorrow I hope fervently that he will appear at the usual breakfast time (he was half an hour late yesterday) so we can get him to the vet for his appointment. After I went indoors, I could hear him crying outside. Broke my heart. Skooter was crabby and unfriendly toward him today so introducing him to our already four cat household might be tricky. No, WOULD be tricky. I would love to keep him but I think ideally he should go to the shelter and be adopted by someone with fewer cats. (But I love him!) The big problem is the two week to months of wait before he gets to the top of the intake list. Meanwhile, there are coyotes out there at night….anywhere on the peninsula. I have no idea where he sleeps. Getting hims tested for feline leukemia and feline HIV is my priority so that I can know if it is safe to bring him indoors. Quite obviously, I already would have if not for that concern.

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7 March: three small jobs

Monday, 7 March, 2022

The Red Barn

We made our first visit to cut back perennials and to weed. Disney was well pleased to get one biscuit, take it away and hide it, get another half…although just half was rather disappointing…but not as disappointing as not getting a third. We had to save some for other dogs!

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13 Nov: fall clean up continues

Wednesday, 13 November 2019

I wanted to capture how sparkly the azolla looked on our small pond after a night of rain.

I failed to show the sparkle.  Azolla is a water “fern” that came in to my ponds on some plant or other.  If we have a hard freeze, it might go away.  I like it.  I just scoop it out with a net and throw it on the garden bed nearby.  A most interesting article in Scientific American, “Can the Fern that Cooled the Planet Do it Again?”, tells about its prehistoric history and how it might be useful against climate change.  The article also states that is is edible (and tastes “like a blade of grass”). It’s a must read.  Perhaps azolla should be taken off the noxious weed list, eh?

midday back garden; the hips are from Rosa moyesii

Norwood garden

We finally got two doors down to the Norwood garden to trim up the small garden beds.

Allan thought the entrance needed a bit of a trim…

…so he fixed it.

trimming lavender

before, east side (forgot the after)

west side lavender before

after

The lavenders are probably a decade old and still bloom profusely.

I fretted over the privet I cut back hard last time, to make it more shapely next year.  I scraped at a stem with a fingernail and it is green underneath, so it should be fine.

Allan weeded the north bed.

We then stopped at the Depot Restaurant just to water the window boxes.

still blooming (Allan’s photo)

Long Beach

We went to Dennis Co in a quest for mulch, the quickest place to buy some bags for a south end job.  They did not have what I wanted (Soil Building Compost and potting soil).  How can potting soil be missing from the stock in winter?  Surely people repot their house plants, at the very least.  (There was one stack of potting soil bags of the fanciest and most expensive sort that is out of my league.)

However, the stop did reveal to us how terribly messy the two northernmost planters were.

Geranium ‘Rozanne’ gone all shabby

after

As I turned my attention to the planters across the street, Lezlie and I sighted each other.

Lezlie!

Just this morning, I had sent her the link to this delightful blog post with this hilarious bit about going to town: “Today we had a day trip to the big city, well a city anyway.  We wore our best smocks held neatly in place with baler twine and caught the horse and trap into town.” Lezlie and I had a good laugh about it because “getting out the old mule and buckboard” is how we describe the effort it takes for her to come all the way south (about a fifteen minute drive) or for us to go all the way north to visit her in the Klipsan Beach area.

We got to pet this beautiful dog who was watching me work.

Allan’s photo

As for the second planter, if a santolina still looks good, I like to leave it till spring before trimming.  But if it looks like this…

….I do this.

after

Meanwhile, Allan had sheared back a street tree garden where the BadAster has firmly insinuated itself.

While I would have liked to collect all those leaves, we did not have time.

The Planter Box

We drove on to The Planter Box for our mulch and potting soil.

autumn display

As we were leaving, Teresa asked if we could identify a plant from a customer’s phone photo.  We could not.  But in the course of the conversation with the customer, Heidi, we learned that her uncle was Frank Herbert (author of the Dune series, which i loved in high school).  When I learned she is not on Facebook, we talked about the book I have been reading called Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. She recommended a book called The Soul of Silence.  It was a fortuitous introduction.  (I wish she and I could be Facebook friends.)

The Red Barn

We did a thorough weeding of the narrow garden bed and mulched it with Gardner and Bloome Soil Conditioner.  I had hoped one bale would be enough, as I had other plans for the second bale. The garden bed took both.

The main weed here is the annoying creeping sorrel.

Allan’s photos:

before

our good friend, barn cat Cosmo

in our van

after

I admired the way someone had decorated one of the planters.

pineapple sage and fall decor

Diane’s garden

Next door to the barn we did more fall cutting back at Diane’s garden.  We were rather anxiously racing sunset. I had been unable to remember if I had clipped back the tall sanguisorbas.  My own blog’s photos of last time had showed me we had not.

The roadside garden at dusk, after clipping the sanguisorba and some other plants:

I think I can consider the roadside garden as put to bed for the winter.  There will be just one more visit to Diane’s to tidy her back garden containers if we have a hard frost.

in Diane’s back garden

Allan trimmed the bed next to the house.

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’s dried flowers will look fine through the winter.

The work board tonight:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2 July: several jobs

Tuesday, 2 July 2019

At home, here is my rose ‘Veilchenblau’, proving that Allan’s improvement of the front garden deer fortification is working.

Not a clear photo.  I almost missed this blue-violet rose this year.  It is from a cutting from my old Ilwaco house… from a cutting from my Seattle garden…made from a cutting from the rose belonging to Louise Runnings, mother of Bryan with whom I lived from January 1982 to August 1986. So many memories. That rose goes back many years.

J’s garden

Yesterday evening, I had not finished pruning back branches that were hanging over the fence.  We have a new tool for that, on the left, recommended to us by our neighbour, Scott.  (He’s Cotah and Bentley’s dog-dad.)

Allan’s photo, an improvement over our old pole pruner

before

after (Allan’s photos)

The new pruner is great.  It has clipper-type grips that you squeeze to get it to clip.

On the J’s path, thyme is in bloom.

The Red Barn

We weeded and watered.

barn swallow photobomb

gaillardia gasping for water

Diane’s garden

We weeded, deadheaded, and watered two areas.

containers

two salvias, Black and Blue and patens

Holly, Whiskey, and Misty got biscuits.

I groomed the roadside garden, where the sweet peas are doing well.

Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’

Stipa gigantea

The septic vault garden:

Allium christophii, Brodiaea ‘Silver Queen’. ‘Jackman’s Blue’ rue

Long Beach

I tidied up Veterans Field gardens so we would not have to do it later in the busy Fourth of July week.  I am not happy with the corner garden.  I took some plants out because it was too dry.  Now parts of it are wet and the horsetail is too happy. After weeding, the garden looks beat up.

I am happier with the flag pavilion garden.

Brodiaea ‘Queen Fabiola’ and Salvia ‘May Night’

Meanwhile, Allan used our new pole pruners to get blackberry out of Third Street Park.

The new pruners worked a treat.

busy Third Street Park (Allan’s photo)

The Boreas Inn

We weeded and did not have to water because we can count on Susie, owner and innkeeper, to do it.

Despite improvements, the sandy soil is a challenge, making the poppies at the west end quite small.

Allan’s photo

Allan’s photo

A veronica planted by Susie

deer prints (Allan’s photo)

Deer are not eating the lilies. (Allan’s photo)

During the two years when we gave this job away, some Eutrochium (Joe Pye weed), which likes moisture, got planted in this challengingly dry (despite watering) garden.  Here, it is knee height.  In my garden, it is as tall as me. It wants rich, moist soil.  In the fall, I will try to find a position for it closer to the inn instead of in the sandy lawn beds.

Salvia ‘Amistad’ (means “friendship”)

It can join Amistad in the Garden Suite bed, where Susie did go out and smell the night scented stock and agrees it is amazing.

Matthiola longipetala, night scented stock

You have to think carefully about what will grow this close to the beach.  One of these days, I am going to make an educational blog page about the plants that I like best for beachy gardens.

the path to the beach

Long Beach

We finished by doing a quick weeding of the little pop outs.

before

after

They never get supplemental water.

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5 March: more wake up calls to gardens

Tuesday, 5 March 2019

I persist in using my phone for photos instead of my crisper new (used) camera. This must change, soon. It all has to do with the lazy desire to blog from my comfy chair rather than my computer desk.

Before work:

I asked Allan to take some photos of his black hellebore. He took all of these in his garden:

We began the workday with our first call of the year to

The Red Barn.

I was pleased to see Cosmo the barn cat…

…and Junior the dog.

Next door at..

Diane’s garden

….we trimmed perennials in the garden beds and the raised box garden.

My good friend Misty woofed a greeting, and got a belly rub.

The raised septic bed:

Allan’s photo

Allan trimmed the Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and more in the roadside garden:

Long Beach

We polished off two little jobs by trimming the Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ in Veterans Field…

Allan’s photo

…and then, in the big pop put, trimming lavender and the regrettably vigorous rugosa roses and some of the so-called dwarf pampas grass (now on the noxious weed list).

At home, the work list is getting streamlined. With rain mixed with…snow!…predicted, we may have a few days off, not least because my friend of 40 years is coming to the peninsula for three nights.

Work board tonight

I will be taking a break from working and blogging while she is here.

In garden show news, I discovered that a website called Tubi has the entire series of Glorious Gardens from Above AND that the DailyMotion website has a wealth of Love Your Garden shows that I haven’t seen. I’m thrilled to have more Love Your Garden to watch. So far, Love Your Garden has played without ads, but an episode of Monty Don’s Paradise Gardens had an ad every three minutes. It’s fair for a site to support itself with ads…but every three minutes makes my head spin.

Soon it will be daylight saving time, time to put my all-consuming British garden show addiction aside for gardening season. I have been greatly moved and inspired and given new energy by my hours of watching. I’m sure I will still be watching some (especially if BritBox has the new Gardeners’ World). But it is almost time to leave the comfy chair for the long days of spring and summer.

Yesterday evening, one of the glorious gardens that Christine Walkden took me to was Powis Castle, of great interest because of course I grow lots of Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’.

My year of plans for my garden are much smaller but are quite exciting to me.

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15 Nov: down to one

Thursday, 15 November 2018

Instead of the predicted rain, we had another beautifully sunny day.

Long Beach

I had woken up early with a thought of cutting down what loomed in my mind as a terribly out of scale miscanthus in Fifth Street Park, which was not even supposed to be on today’s agenda.  When we got there, it did not look anything like the monster in my mind.

So instead, I used The Toy (Stihl cordless shears) to cut down a much smaller grass on the other side of the park, one that does not die back well.

before

after

Brainstorm: In late winter, when we return to work, we will move a bit of this grass over the other side, by that not so big miscanthus, to make the two end pieces of the park match better.

The Red Barn

We mulched with a bale of Gardner and Bloome compost and admired the horses.  Horse admiration is really why I keep this tiny job. (Also, it is conveniently next door to Diane’s garden.)  Allan’s photos:

a Friesian

before

after

The Shelburne Hotel

Allan checked the pots up on most of the second floor decks and balconies:

We had two missions: a preliminary trimming of the vastly overgrown wisteria and more weeding and cutting back in the garden.  We were especially going after orange montbretia, badaster, aegepodium, and misplaced and aggressive Spirea douglasii.

The wisteria will get a massive cutback in February.  It has built itself up and up into a huge mound, with dead underneath, and its flowers are mostly hidden.  Today was only a small beginning.

before

after

the vast mound

after (leaving some street-view-blocking leaves for now)

I began, and then Allan took over while I weeded.

after (Allan’s photo)

Allan is in there.

after

before, inside the fence ((Allan’s photos)

and after

It will be February ladder work by Allan to do the rest.  (I will haul the debris to the trailer.)

At the end of the work day, the garden was far more cut back than I would do with my own.  I think the tidy look makes most hotel guests feel that the garden is cared for in winter.

looking north

looking south

Even with all the mulch we have applied, I wish the soil level was higher in there.

looking south

back garden

calendulas for Chef Casey

back garden, pineapple sage

The one mission I did not complete this fall was a thorough (although probably futile) dig out of the madly running and stinky houttuynia in the bed above.  It is now on my agenda for February 2019.

pub windows aglow

We sadly could not be lured into the pub tonight because we had a full trailer load of debris to offload at home, some for the wheelie bin (invasive weeds), some for the chipper and some for the compost pile (clean debris only).

And now we are down to one day of fall clean up: The final work visit of all (our) time to  Klipsan Beach Cottages, scheduled for tomorrow.

 

 

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18 July: the north day

Wednesday, 17 July 2018

I call the day we go to Klipsan Beach Cottages our “north end” day out of habit, because it used to include Marilyn’s garden up in Surfside.  KBC is north, but the peninsula goes on considerably further north.

You can see above Grayland, on the other side of the mouth of Willapa Bay, where we had such lovely garden touring on the weekend.

We started at

The Depot Restaurant

with the usual weeding and no watering.  Although the sprinkler system does not hit the whole garden, last night’s rain had it wet enough.

Direama (Angel’s Fishing Rod)

I deadheaded and checked on the watering of the plantings on the north side; the window boxes and barrels were planted up by Roxanne of the Basket Case Greenhouse.

Just west across the street is the Sou’wester Lodge and RV park, where cabins and vintage trailers are for rent.  All sorts of interesting artistic and musical events happen there.  For the last almost two years, I have been too tired to go to them; it’s not that I have lost interest. The energy to get out and about in the evening is not there, especially if it involves socializing with new people.  I get too tired to make words (although Allan might disagree about how many words I make).

I advise you to check The Sou’wester out, maybe stay there when you visit our area.

At the Depot, I keep picking away at the escallonia that wants to block the sign.  Yes, if it were mine, I would cut it all the way down.  But I can’t here, so I keep thinning it to try to get new growth all the way through, and then I can cut it way back.  It was not such a problem before that sign about the Clamshell Railway went in.

We stopped at Sid’s Market, across the street from the Shelburne, for some milk for a friend.  With no cars parked in front, I had a great view of the Shelburne Hotel.

The Red Barn

We did our usual weeding, watering and deadheading.  The deadheading of shasta daisies has begun.

our good friend Rosie and the garden

by the main barn door

It’s a small garden.

I like seeing the horses.

by the side barn door

Tigridia

Diane’s garden

When we arrived at Diane’s garden, I saw a big hanging basket with a card sitting on the back steps and immediately knew that Larry, who had been very ill, had passed away.  The garden today was cared for with sadness.  Every galvanized container, large and small, in my garden is from Larry, who used to collect them for us.  He had a saw sharpening business in the past and made a special little rig (my word) to sharpen the blades of Allan’s little rechargeable chain saw.

I had decided to plant one of my three Teucrium ‘Purple Tails’ from Markham Farm along the roadside garden, because it is a tough plant. A bee discovered it while it was waiting in the parking area.

Allan’s photo

Allan’s photo

in its new home (Allan’s photo)

roadside garden

the raised box garden

Cosmos ‘Pop Socks’

Nasturtium ‘Caribbean Cocktail’

The Basket Case Greenhouse

Roxanne had grown me some Eryngium giganteum from a seed packet I bought.  I am terrible at growing from seed.  They look good.

I bought them all.  She also gave me some agastaches and other plants that she grew from seed as a gift to comfort me for the earlier Agastache Catastrophe of 2018. Please note that her nursery had nothing to do with said catastrophe; she was just sympathetic because I kvetched a lot to her about it.

Roxanne and a bouquet

Fortunately, Allan realized before we drove off that I had put the flat of eryngiums on the trailer hitch and forgotten to load them into the van. Otherwise we would perhaps have had an eryngium catastrophe today.

Joe’s Place

We had two things to deliver to our friend Joe, whose truck was broken down: a maritime history magazine from the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum and a half gallon of milk.  I have written about Joe’s place before, here.

Joe, a veteran, is flying his flag as a distress signal because of his concern over the Trump-Putin connection.

Joe creates and sells “Dangerous Toys”.

driveway partly made of crushed china

fence; I share Joe’s liking for old Spartan trailers.

Klipsan Beach Cottages

Just our usual summertime hour of tidying the fenced garden and surrounding areas.

outside the fenced garden

elephant garlic with little paper hat on

dierama

lily

and lily

and lily

and lily

rose

rose

And what do I see in the photo above but a bunch of bindweed that I missed while I was there.

agapanthus, much deeper blue than the bright sunlight shows

Allan’s photo

our good friend Bella (Allan’s photo)

Shelburne Hotel

We would be watering and tidying tomorrow.  Today, we just had a little project, putting a canna in the bog garden that Allan cleared of blackberries last time.  Even though it won’t get enough sun, I hope it will look ok for the rest of the summer.  My plan is to put some darmera peltata starts in there in the fall.

Last time:

This odd little nook had the native blackberry in it.

Today:

Allan’s photo

A big plastic tub is in the basis for this; maybe it was once supposed to be a pool.  It is by the ramp where one enters the north side of the restaurant dining room:

Or one can walk this way to the front door.

In the back yard, I found that the Sunset runner beans (grown from seed by Roxanne) have beans now.

front garden: sorry to see the goatsbeard flowers fading to brown

Nicotiana ‘Fragrant Cloud’

Port of Ilwaco

We did the watering of the curbside gardens.

telephoto at midway

Allan had bought a new hose (because of the one that got its end driven on yesterday).  I am pleased that it is long enough to reach the drive-over garden…if I shoot the water at it from five feet away.

Allan dragged the heavy hose for me past the garden he was watering to the next one.

by ArtPort Gallery

I delegate most of the weeding of that one to Allan because I find it painful to walk on river rock.

my view while dumping some garbage in a port wheelie bin

A bit of our old garden is trying to survive the construction (new wall and windows) at the port office.

Hang in there, garden will be back soon.

pots at OleBob’s Café and fish market

Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’

Eryngium (Allan’s photo)

Allan’s photo

I think that when Sapphire Blue reseeds itself, it turns itself into this basic, beautiful, smaller flowered eryngium.  Is that possible?

If we can polish off the rest of the week’s tasks tomorrow, we will have Friday off. I want to enjoy my own garden in the peak of my lily season.

 

 

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30 April: some planting

Monday, 30 April 2018

Skooter taking in the sun on the front porch

My most beloved Monty Don (host of Gardeners’ World) says that black beetles are a sign of a healthy garden, and that they eat slugs.

Here’s one crossing our driveway this morning. (Allan’s photo)

I love the way the slightly darker, glossier post office sets off our volunteer garden:

Stipa gigantea

By the way, someone convinced me that Stipa should be pronounced with an i like pipe or ripe.  Montagu DON says Stee-pa. So! Stee-pa it is.

Allium neapolitanum

The Red Barn Arena

We met the new barn cat, Cosmo.

A Coast Guard helicopter flew overhead while we worked.

Allan’s photos

my new friend, 9 months old

Someone had left a gift of buttercup flowers in a barrel.

We are still not over our bad, debilitating colds, but we do feel more energetic today.

Tulip clusiana ‘Lady Jane’

crabbing gear at the barn

Diane’s garden

Allan added a bale of Gardner and Bloome mulch to the driveway corner garden.

before

after

I added an Agastache ‘Cotton Candy’ and some more sweet pea seeds to the long roadside bed.

Our main focus was adding some Agastache ‘Acapulco Salmon and Pink’ and ‘Sangria’, Salvia patens, Nicotiana langsdorfii, and some seeds (alyssum, pale yellow cosmos ‘Xanthos’, night scented stock, peachy nasturtiums) to the raised septic garden.

Over the fence:

Allan’s photo

I am most pleased with the display so far in this new raised bed.

Tulip ‘Cummins’

Tulip ‘Cummins’

Tulip ‘Cool Crystal’

Tulip ‘China Town’

Tulip ‘Cool Crystal’ in a pot

The Planter Box

We visited The Planter Box to see if they might have a columnar ornamental pear to replace one that got taken out by a drunk driver in Ilwaco.  The only one was THIS size:

PB co-owner Raymond is a tall man. This tree is maybe even too big to even fit in the sidewalk hole!

Well.  We had thought we were not going to have to be the ones to deal with the tree issue at all, and now that it is so late, we may just have to plant flowers in that one sidewalk spot. I heartily rejected the proposed idea (not proposed at the Planter Box!) that we should just put in a different kind of tree.  You cannot put in one odd duck in a run of ten street trees.

If only the Planter Box had had one the size of their manageable apple trees:

At the Planter Box:

Armeria maritima (sea thrift)

artichokes

Klipsan Beach Cottages

Due to bad weather, and our bad colds, and our Shelburne Hotel garden project, we had not been to KBC all month.  We found that the deer had been getting into the fenced garden and eating the roses.  Other than that, all looked well enough and we got the garden somewhat groomed and a few plants planted in a busy two hour gardening frenzy.  I was grateful that Allan did all the planting—my least favourite gardening job.

Allan’s photos:

a new Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’ 

The podophyllum has gone from one leaf to three this year.

unfurling sword ferns

My photos:

tree peony

roses stripped by deer

Thalictrum ‘Elin’

Tulips ‘Black Hero’ and ‘Sensual Touch’

Tulip ‘Formosa’

Tulip ‘Formosa’

Tulip ‘Cool Crystal’

Tetrapanax

viridiflora tulips

pond garden

tulips and Persicaria ‘Golden Arrow’

taking leave of the tidied up garden

more

On the way home, we made one little stop at the Shelburne, where Allan staked a little (will be big) Fuchsia ‘Sharpitor Aurea’; I had gotten worried it would be stepped on.

I had to do billing, so might not get to watch any Gardeners’ World this evening.  Maybe…just one episode at bedtime.

later:

Bliss. In episode five of year 2015, a jungle garden is visited.

You can watch the segment Here .

At age 60, Monty can gracefully flop to the ground to commune with the plants.

I envy that spryness.

Takeaway: “It is important to make ponds because we’ve lost the ponds that used to be on farmlands all over the country.”

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5 March: four jobs and a goodbye

Monday, 5 March 2018

Shelburne Hotel

All we intended to do at the Shelburne was to pop in some lambs ears and a Chelone (pink turtlehead), plants from my garden.  We parked at the south end of the block and there, we were deeply bothered by the site of the sidewalk edge garden which looked ever so tatty.  We found ourselves tidying it up.

The rhododendron has tons of old montbretia around it, and someone has planted (sometime in the last ten years) persicaria, probably a division of the ‘Firetail’ I planted in the main garden years ago.

before (Allan’s photos)

after

before

and after

before

after

I admired the main garden, looking north.

Long Beach

As we headed toward our next intended job, we paused at the welcome sign to clip some annuals (yellow bidens) that still had signs of life.

Someone had the utter gall to clip and steal the spotlight from the front of the sign.

I saw this in the police report a few weeks back.

When I see that deer are eating the grape hyacinth on the sidewalk corner of this planter…

….I become very concerned about the fate of the tulips that are just emerging.

The Red Barn

We attended to the spring clean up at our littlest job.

One of the horse people’s nice dog, Junior, came for pets.

Allan’s photos, before

after

before

after

The Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’ came through the winter surprisingly well.

Diane’s garden

I pushed the wheelbarrow across a pasture to the garden next door.

My dear old friend Misty!

lots of early flowers in the septic box garden

I planted lilies along the roadside fence and we weeded and clipped.

Allan’s photos fill out the rest of today’s blog.

before

after, with me planting lilies

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ to clip

Long Beach

We went back to our project of tidying the Bolstad beach approach planters and shearing back ornamental grasses in the garden there (of which there are not many, for which I am grateful at this time of year).

before

after

Soon we will have to weed this whole darn garden, all the way out to that distant red buoy.  It has lots of lawn-like grass again and I dread the job, as always.  It looms as soon as we get the spring clean up list done.  Even before that, we must clip the roses in the first section to the ground, which we do every couple of years.

On the way home, I checked my messages and got some surprising news: At one of our resort-type jobs, the manager that we had worked with for the last several years is no longer working there.  I will let astute readers figure out which place, based on the fact that we resigned this very evening and it will therefore no longer appear in this blog, AND based on the clue that said manager is the person belonging to one of our favourite dogs.  No doggie friend, no point in going to that job!  (Lest anyone be worried, this is not, of course, Klipsan Beach Cottages, our most longtime job of 20 years.) This meant that at home, I had to write a resignation letter, in which I recommended three excellent gardening businesses which would be good to immediately replace us: Sea Star Gardening (Dave and Melissa), Willapa Gardening (Todd), and Flowering Hedge Design (Terran and Shelly).  I had already checked to be sure that one of the three has time for a new job, so I need not feel bad about leaving the garden.

This worked out well for us.  I had been hoping to drop a job since adding the Shelburne.  I have requested a play date sometime this summer with my doggie friend.

Tonight, I was able to erase two tasks off the work list.  We still have the Sid Snyder approach planters to do before erasing that task.

I continued to work on billing, and in the process made a list that may interest some, of all the free plants I have added to the Shelburne hotel garden in the last two weeks.

5	Allium ampeloprasum	elephant garlic
2	Allium cepa	Egyptian walking onions
3	Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’
2	Arisarum proboscideum	mouse plant
2	Artemisia ‘Ghuizo’
1	Chelone lyonii	pink turtlehead
3	Eryngiums	sea holly
1	Erythronium	dog tooth violet
2	Gaura ‘Whirling Butterflies
2	Geranium macrorrhizum
1	Helenium ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’
3	Iris foetidissima
2	Origanum vulgare ‘Aureum	golden oregano
1	Persicaria ‘Firetail’
2	Persicaria ‘Golden Arrow’
1	Persicaria bistorta ‘Superba
2	Primula veris	cowslip primrose
3	Sanguisorba ‘Pink Elephant’	burnet
1	Sanguisorba ‘Tanna’
1	Sanguisorba candadensis
3	Sanguisorba obtusa
2	Scrophularia auriculata ‘Variegata‘	figwort
1	Solidago ‘Fireworks’	(clumping) goldenrod
2	Stachys bizantina ‘Silver Carpet’	lambs ears
1	Stipa gigantea	feather grass
1	Tetrapanax papyrifer ‘Steroidal Giant’	rice paper plant
1	Verbascum	mullein

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