8 June: better day off

Sunday, 8 June 2014

my day

A better day off than yesterday because there was not smoke.  And much as I like friends and the market, the perfect day off for me is when I do not set one toe off my own property.

Smoky likes the little hollow in the middle of the garden where I dug a not so good rose out awhile back.

A project suddenly came to me, and I took the three bags of newspaper that we had in the garage and made a new debris bed in the southwest corner of the fenced yard.  My goal was to make the end of the long narrow fence bed ready in case I need room for more plants this summer; since we will soon at at a Hardy Plant Society plant sale, I had better be ready!

Eventually, I will have a low bed here with some more shade plants.

I ran out of newspaper and cardboard and Allan was off watering the gardens at the port.  (His choice not to take the day off; the dryness of those gardens had disturbed him.)

I asked local expert Kathleen Sayce for an ID on this flower.  Diplarrhena moraea (New Zealand, Butterfly Flag).  The green tag marks a plant (dormant, probably) from Todd in N. Carolina.

the flowers of my most stunning Sambucus laciniata

It’s a treasure. Below, Philadelphus ‘Belle Etoile’ droops its fragrant truss of white flowers.

I spent some time hanging up fence decor instead of weeding…and relettering signs instead of weeding…

a re-lettered sign

Recently, my dear distant friend Louise Runnings died, she who was the mother of Bryan, with whom I lived for five years (1981-86), and she had written to me on every birthday and Christmas since then.  Before she moved to Qualicum Beach, BC, she used to still have me over for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  So as I think of her daily, the purple rose ‘Veilchenblau’ that I got from her as a cutting is blooming.

She called it her stolen rose as she herself got it by a cutting.

Louise: friend, mentor, gardener, Quaker, peace activist; I loved the way she called Bryan “chum” and so valued the way she kept in touch with me.

1986 in Vancouver, BC

Bryan, his sister Gwyneth, Louise, Bryan’s brother Morgan, and me at the house of the punk band D.O.A,

Gwyneth, who kindly got in touch with me so that I could write a last letter to Louise, and her mother.  Louise would have been 86 on June 12.

Louise Runnings obituary is here.

Rosa Veilchenblau will always bring back memories.

front garden; Allan mowed when he came home.

The bird scare tape idea in the front garden is working so far to scare deer; the roses are growing back.

On both days off, I picked ripe strawberries in the dusk; there was too much wind to have a campfire even though we were prepared with sausages and beer.

In the water box…I think I managed to catch a frog in mid croak.

Allan’s Day

Allan checked out the progress on the controlled burn house a block away that had caused so much smoke on Saturday.

The little house had been leaning so no one could go inside; no wonder the smoke smelled a bit toxic.

The crew had tried to save a maple tree; I can see here that it must have gotten too scorched. It is gone; the hawthorne still stands.  I admire the skill that left the wooden buildings standing, too.

Allan was able to hose water the bed at the west end of the port.

The building inside the sidewalk has just done some landscaping as well.

I think this and one other rose will be the only welcome plants.  (Dare I imperialize with poppy seeds?  There is landscape fabric under the bark.)

Allan dug a little hole to see how dry the soil was. (Dry down deep.) When I saw it, I thought he was showing me that someone had stolen a plant!

better

Allan was pleased to meet a Moto Guzzi rider who had just been to visit members of Allan’s old Guzzi club up north (Seattle Tacoma area)

I’m sure Allan wished he himself was riding off on his red Moto Guzzi (which has some problems at the moment).

my favourite perennial, Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’, by Marie Powell Gallery

After being able to water several of the Howerton Way gardens with hoses hooked up here and there, he got to the east end.  The east end garden has no hose access, so Allan bucket watered, flooding it with 23 five gallon buckets of water.

flooded with bucket water

the plants are singing!

one last photo of the burn, and then home to mow the lawn

Next: back to work, now firmly into the season of watering.

 

 

 

 

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1 June: (not much of a) day off

Sunday, 1 June 2014

my day

Sunday, upon waking (after still not quite enough sleep), felt to me like a promising, good, very productive gardening day.

the view from my window

I frittered away very little time on breakfast, Facebook, and email before getting back to my weeding.

the back garden with weeds scattered around

By two PM, I had a Senecio greyi, a couple of Agastaches, a Geum ‘Pumpkin’ and a six pack of cosmos planted where the bad phlox came out yesterday. And then, suddenly, the sun came out and it was HOT. I went inside and when I looked at the temperature, I thought that 65 could not be right. It felt more like 80 to me.

I did have to bill Long Beach town for the last half of May, so I booted up the computer, an unusual action for a non rainy afternoon. Then I decided I should make my Saturday Market blog entry…and then the entry for Friday (as I am running behind.) The weather still looked hot, and I thought if I just did some more billing, I could go out around 5 PM and garden for two more hours in the coolness.

Billing for annuals planting time is complicated and time consuming and hurts my brain…so many plants. Fortunately, I had made the plant lists during a rainy spell the previous weekend. 5 PM became 6 PM…7 PM…8 PM as I made spreadsheets with frustration and felt a nice cool breeze through my window. And yet, if I could just get all the billing done, I would not have to suffer over it after work during the week. Thus I prevailed until after 8, and it was done!

Allan’s day

Meanwhile, Allan did the inaugural water trailer watering of the Ilwaco planters. It did not go smoothly. The new inflatable hose burst; electric tape worked to fix it. The battery for the trailer ran out of charge, so we probably do need a new one, and the battery on the van also died from all the stopping and starting required to park near enough to each planter to hose water. (It was probably low because Allan had been doing some minor tinkering on the van’s air conditioning the day before with some stopping and starting.) With all that slowdown, and having to move the van a couple of times because parking to water the planters seems to vex other drivers (I think we need an official flashing yellow light), it took yonks more time than bucket watering. I still think the city would find in the long run that it would save money to give us hose spigots. However, we are stuck into the job for this year so will keep on with the water truck. Maybe next year someone else can do the watering.

dropping the trailer off in the city works yard…at least it’s out of our yard now.

under the green tarp…

If the crew fills the trailer every time we drop it off, ten minutes per watering session will be saved, maybe fifteen including the parking at the boatyard to get water. However, will it then be too heavy for Allan to hook it up to the van?

Our evening

At last, I got back out into the garden at dusk, and Allan had built a campfire.

I took a dusk walk around the garden and managed to not get too frustrated at all I did not get done outside today.

Maxine’s white rose

Sambucus ‘Sutherland Gold’

a rose from Heirloom Roses in Oregon.

One flower on my young Rosa moyesii ‘Geranium’

I was inspired to get mine by this Rosa moyesii ‘Geranium’at Joy Creek Nursery two years ago. Mine has a ways to go to be this gorgeous.

Sambucus nigra laciniata (cutleaf elderberry)

I love this little tree…not so little when I saw a handsome specimen at Joy Creek Nursery years ago (which is where I got mine).

I’m thinking of a fence enhancement that will block that shiny tarp next door.

a beloved feathery sanguisorba (again, I know I showed it recently, maybe yesterday!). I collect these after seeing some in a slideshow by Piet Oudolf, years ago at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show..

I must mark these alliums well in order to move them in the fall. Rozanne is swallowing them. (I did move some but could not find them all.)

Those alliums…I thought they would look like glass fishing balls floating above the river of Rozanne. Rozanne turned out to be more vigorous than I had dreamed of.

Paul’s Himalayan Musk rose, with Nora’s house

The peachy coloured rose to the right is NOT Gloire de Dijon, as I found the real Gloire de Dijon further along the fence and much much smaller.

I did not achieve my goal of getting this edge weeded…

or this one…

Nor did I get the wild impatiens or the dreaded bindweed (creeping in from next door) out of this bogsy woods corner.

Smokey and Frosty (in their Birds Be Safe collars) were excited to have a campfire. They enjoy having us at home on weekends.

There’s always next weekend, if we can get all the work done before then…

Allan toasts a hot dog bun..

and enjoyed a Starvation Alley cranberry beer from North Jetty Brewing.

Later, Allan went on a quest to find one of the elusive frogs, so loudly croaking each night and then falling quiet any time we come near. In the water boxes by the patio, he tracked one down.

hiding

just one of many

P.S. a book

It takes me much longer to read a book these days, just a bit at the end of each day. All this past week I have been completely smitten by Joe Queenan’s One for the Books. I’ve enjoyed all of the Queenan books of essays that I’ve read. He is a cynic and a curmudgeon. I quite like curmudgeons and a certain kind of funny cynic. Give me a book like that any day over something all sweetness and light like Eat, Pray, Love. (To be fair, the title of the latter puts me off so much that I haven’t ever read it.)

bookmarks for all the pages with book recommendations or wonderful passages

I do love a reason to feel better about not driving. I read many many books while taking buses in Seattle.

on libraries being miracles

One line that makes a book memorable.

Several of Queenan’s stories throughout One for the Books speak of the serendipity that comes into our lives by carrying books around. (You can tell a lot by the book someone is reading.) And by going to bookstores and libraries…something about seeing a book a friend had recommended, and then encountering the same friend upon leaving the book store. My bookmarks failed me and I could find only one of those passages again to photograph. Each ended with a similar observation: “I don’t think you can have this sort of experience with a Kindle”.

High on my list now is Queenan’s Closing Time, a memoir that I did not know existed.

 

 

 

 

 

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