Thursday, 16 February 2017
I took a walk toward the back of the garden to clip some branches for a friend.

Now that I have a neighbour next door, I should plan ahead to make this a nicer looking area instead of a debris pile.

center bed: much to do

west bed area where I cleared out some fuchsias shows room for new plants
My goal was to clip a few winter blooming honeysuckle branches to take with me today.

Lonicera fragrantissima
We drove all the way up to Surfside to a former job, Marilyn’s garden.
Arriving ten minutes early, we took a brief drive through Surfside.

Surfside Canal
Then we had a hard time finding a turn around road and were slightly late. We became verklempt driving by the old location of
Steve’s Great Day Café.
Chris and Wally’s Garden
Arriving at Marilyn’s former garden, we met with the new owners and with Dave and Melissa, who are going to do the spring clean up.
We’re all ever so pleased that the new owners have a great interest in the garden.

Allan’s photo
Marilyn’s daughter had given Chris and Wally some photos of the house before the garden was ever installed.

When Dave and Mel get the grasses clipped back, the garden will be almost flat again.
Here you can see a slideshow of how it transforms through the year.
Postcard Party
Here’s where our new glue sticks came into play, along with some old seed catalogs. Local artist Michelle Naquaiya had organized one of several postcard making parties. The idea is to send a bazillion postcards from all over the nation to D. Trump on March 15th. Of course, my large contingent of local resisters are not sending them to express pleasure or admiration. I suggested that arty postcards sent to any politician might be passed around more and thus get read more. (We hear that it takes longer for a letter in an envelope to even get opened because of anthrax scares.) I also wanted to make some thank you post cards for two of our good Washington State politicians, Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray.

Naquaiya studio
You can use old cereal and other food boxes for card stock. I used to enjoy making postcards back before email! It took me back to the days of looking at the collages in
my grandma’s scrapbooks.

ingredients

I was thrilled to meet again a woman whose garden I had photographed for the edible garden tour two years ago. Little did I know that we shared a passion for leftist politics as well as quirky garden art. She has the same name and similar mannerisms as someone I knew long ago so I remembered her…after a little while. It took longer than it should have because of my face blindness.

Allan’s photo
Some of our results in two hours:

My thank yous to Patty and Maria

I was using material from seed catalogs. I don’t imagine Mother Nature as a young blonde gal, but she’s all had (and I am sure is a lovely person). I realized later that using seed catalogs inspired environmentalism as my main topic.

Allan’s messages had a theme:


Our overseas readers might not know how important this is to working class self employed people. Before the ACA (“Obamacare”), we were literally paying 1/3 of our annual income on mediocre health insurance.
Here are some of the other creations.

Enter a caption





and the classic one
It was, of course, satisfying and comforting to sit in a group of like minded and oh so funny folk. A few of the post cards are just too outspoken, although hilarious, to share here. (I think they might get
well passed around a government office!) Living here at the edge of the coast, there are no government offices to usefully picket within a two hour drive, and perhaps just once a year a bigshot politician
might show up for a town hall meeting. Phone calls and postcards and community are what we have on offer. I doubt it would make any difference to Preznit DT if the entire White House filled up with postcards. However, it gave us much enjoyment to have an art project to do while we talked politics. As Michelle wrote the next day, we made about 50 postcards, “All with personal messages, clever and creative remarks and original art.. We were 10 people who had a good time. It feels good to write down what you feel in this resistance. It’s a small something we can do to have impact.”
After two hours, the party wound up and Allan and I departed to do a little over an hour of clean up at…
Klipsan Beach Cottages.
I think for the next while, a KBC day and art studio day are going to be coordinated events.

Bella was tail thumpingly happy to see us.

Allan’s photo, new sedum growth

The tree peony must not be cut back!

after
The debris pile consists of clean up after yesterday’s wind storm, and today’s clippings.

Allan’s photo
After our industrious day, and after having forgotten to bring the lunch box of emergency snacks, we were suddenly ravenous. We treated ourselves to dinner at
Salt Pub
The view:


Allan’s photo

Allan’s photo

delicious pho
We hope for a good enough weather day tomorrow to finish cleaning up Fifth Street Park in Long Beach. Today, I couldn’t cross a thing off the work board. We must return soon to KBC to finish trimming sword ferns all around the landscape. We’re planning to do so on a postcard party day. Perhaps you might like to join us.
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