30 May: mostly at home

Saturday, 30 May 2015

I’ll tell you a secret: On a day off, I would rather not even leave my property, so sometimes going to the Saturday market on a Saturday off is a self imposed chore.  I do reward myself for taking photos for Discover Ilwaco by buying myself a Pink Poppy Bakery treat.

at home

Frosty all set for a day at home…

So is Mary, by the gardening tools I had set out for later.

I had much that I wanted to do in the garden.  Before the market jaunt, I indulged in some garden admiration.

My new Penstemon davidsonii in my mini-scree garden

another happy little scree plant

one from Todd

and another from Todd

and a scrim of picture perfect horsetail over all (to be attended to soon)

Paul’s Himalayan Musk rose

Rosa moyesii and Stipa gigantea

Rosa moyesii from Joy Creek Nursery

Rosa moyesii ‘Geranium’ at Joy Creek Nursery

a pinky yellow rose which I could identify if I spent some time with the Heirloom Roses catalog.

The Geranium ‘Rozanne River’ has gotten ridiculously tall.

In Allan’s garden…what is it?

Love this mystery flower on a long stem….

The three year old Bartlett pear tree in Allan’s garden has ONE pear. That might mean there IS another pear tree in the neighbourhood.

to market

As I walked the two blocks to the market, I saw the tall ship looming behind the Ilwaco pavilion building.

Lady Washington

I walked from one end of the market to the other, taking photos.

flower pots at the Willapa Crafts booth

Willapa Crafts

De Asis produce

roses at a plant booth

Adorable dogs made the trip worthwhile.

I fell in love with this little one.

I wish I had captured the perfect brown spot on the top of this sweet long haired dachsund’s head.

Some passersby admired the alliums at the Port Office garden and wanted to know what they are.  I told them about some good bulb catalogs.  They insisted that Michigan Bulb Co or Brecks were best because they replace anything that doesn’t grow.

Alliums in the Port Garden

I am not there to argue, so I let it go, but trust me, you will get bigger bulbs from Van Engelen or John Scheepers and Todd recommends Brent and Becky’s Bulbs as having excellent bulbs.

Here was my reward from Pink Poppy Bakery

a beautiful Pink Poppy pie

Salt Hotel remodel is coming along well, due to open at the beginning of July.

Just as I got to the end of the market and was about to go home, I heard someone yelling at me, “Delete that photo!”  I turned to see a new vendor, who had chased me two storefronts down saying I was stealing his art.  I am not going to pinpoint him by sharing the photo I took, but trust me, it shows his whole booth and is not in the least way a close up of his wares.  I think he got more than he bargained for, as I in turn gave him, in a calm tone (really!), my opinion that people take photos nowadays for blogs and Trip Advisor and Instagram and that anyone vending in a public market has to expect photos to be taken and that vendors simply must be kind to the tourists (which, for all he knew, I was).  I told him that he could ruin the day of a tourist who was happily taking photos to remember and share a good day, or perhaps to blog about the delights of the market.  I explained to him about the Discover Ilwaco Facebook page’s Saturday Market albums, and may have even said I would rather have stayed home today but that I am dedicated to promoting the market on social media. When he continued to loudly insist I delete the photo, I did not (of course).  I wonder if a tourist would have meekly complied, and I also wonder if he would have chased down a man his own size.  Feeling by then quite upset and shaken by his loudness, I walked all the way back to the other end where the market manager was, showed him the photo, and got his support and action on the matter.  It all sucked up another half hour of my precious gardening time, and later I wished I had just kept walking when the guy accosted me, and yet I wonder if he then would have grabbed my arm or something even more disconcerting than angry accusatory words.  I completely forgot my plan to take some photos of the tall ship Lady Washington; I went home and took awhile to recover, with a long written conversation back and forth with our Kathleen, who happened to be online and was most helpful.  I scarfed down the lemon treats from Pink Poppy without even savoring them as they should have been savored; at least I had the willpower to save the brownies to share with Allan after dinner.  My new resolve is I will continue to be the bellwether for how tourists are treated; for the most part, the market is a friendly and happy place and I intend to do my part to keep it that way by not being intimidated by one angry man.  (It would have been easy to use the incident as an excuse to just stay home on Saturdays from now on…since that is what I crave to do anyway.)  It’s not the first time that photography has been met with suspicion there, and I do understand how infuriating it is for vendors to feel someone might be taking a photo “because I could make that myself”.  However, next time there is any problem I am going to simply refer the concerned vendor to the market manager.

at home, at peace

When I finally got me arse back in gear after all that, I spent the afternoon into evening productively weeding out much dwarf fireweed and scrimmy horsetail.  Some gardening stream of consciousness:

At last, I can see the shapes of the plants unblurred by weeds. Miscanthus variegatus is fantastic.

Japanese iris stunning, even in bud

Why do I have so many daylilies? This one is pretty good…

but this one had better have a darned good flower or out it goes.

I like the simple old fashioned yellow narrow buds on this one.

I do think I have gone off this daylily, which I believe is ‘Pardon Me’.

I need some of the fabulous new fringed and fancy daylily cultivars like I saw last summer at Floramagoria.

gold daylily and yarrow at Floramagoria last summer

Dortmund rose, almost lost in honeysuckle, with snails

The pink rose that came with the house.

Under it is the perfect spot for some self-seeded Valerian.

Still more Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ had to go.

Solanum crispum ‘Glasnevin’ (blue potato vine)

outside the gate….A day of stress redeemed by gardening.

 

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time at home, 6-23 and 6-25

There was not much time in our garden this week but what time we had was very productive.  Sunday, part of my day off was spent on the pleasant activity of garden touring.  When I got home at almost three, a very rained on Maddy greeting me with complaints about the weather.

grumpy

Calvin had been more sensible and stayed dry on the cat perch.

a sensible boy

I am trying to decide which daylilies stay and which will go.  This one was in disfavour on Sunday but I thought it looked pretty attractive on Thursday morning…

Am I going to be a softie?

This one I do like.

This one is horrid.

I must tag the horrid ones so I remember to remove them later.  I am thinking, because the flowers are edible, that they had better all stay till after the edible garden tour on August 11th!

My task of the afternoon was to plant all my acquisitions from Saturday’s plant shopping excursion.  The light and not too cold rain made for perfect planting weather, negating the need to water anything in.  To my disappointment, I found that the still somewhat empty end of the new west side border is still unplantable.  It looks enticing but is mostly unbroken down garden clippings on top of newspaper with just a thin layer of soil on top.

deceptive

Frustrating because I needed more room for my new plants, but I did manage to get them all into soil here and there.  I think Cataline ‘Gilded Grape’ Torenia looks wonderful next door to Petunia ‘Pretty Much Picasso’.

Torenia and Petunia

Some garden vignettes:

arbour with Clematis ‘Etoile Violette’

The ends of these beds were extended last winter.

Allan cut a monster branch of this tree, but I forgot to take a before pic.

Lots more sun for the potato pile now…spuds grown in debris pile along the east fence.  (Someone recently told me that if spuds come back on their own, crop rotation is not an issue.  I hope that is true.)

Sambucus ‘Black Lace’

“Maxine’s white rambler”

by the cat bench

Centaurea montana; I have not had this become a weed…yet.

My version of edible gardening…neglecting to harvest the chard.

Rose ‘Dortmund’ bowed by rain

Rose ‘Nearly Wild’: I am unimpressed.

some of Allan’s ferns

Pulmonarias

Dicentra scandens

And a few hardy Fuchsias:   I love them and have at least thirty different kinds.  I got many of them at The Basket Case Greenhouse where you will find an excellent collection for sale.

Debron’s Black Cherry

pale pink magellanica

I got my passion for Fuchsias from my grandma, who grew a few small flowering hardy ones and lots of annual ones, wintered over under lights.  She called them her dancing girls.

This is why I keep quitting jobs lately….to try to strike a better balance between being able to pay the bills and yet having more time at home in our own garden.

Tuesday after work I had another garden interlude at home because an intense wind made it unpleasant to work anywhere in Ilwaco or Long Beach.  We had gone to a garden a bit inland for about five hours.  When we got home, the wind had blown alder leaves and even a few Oriental poppy petals all the way over the low roof of the garage and into the driveway.

windblown

I thought that I would stay indoors and work on catching up on the blog (which is running about three days behind); then suddenly the wind died down enough to weed outside without fear of falling tree limbs, and Allan got the lawn mowed, even unto the bogsy woods.

My photos of our garden from that day were taken before work:

intensely fragrant white lilies by the sidewalk fence

Melianthus major by the sidewalk fence (handy for showing people that the leaves smell like peanut butter!)

front garden, still mostly green

Tetrapanax papyrifer ‘Steroidal Giant’ hiding a lily

Lily ‘Landini’

Tomorrow:  The week in work, and maybe then I will be caught up just momentarily.

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