I took more plants with us today than actually got planted, so they rode around for the day and then came back home.
My first thought was that the Ilwaco Post Office garden, a volunteer project I came up with a couple of years ago, desperately needed a half moon edging by the little grass walkway.
Because our town does not have home mail delivery, the Post Office is a six day a week stop for many people. It’s an embarrassment when I get too busy to keep the garden nice.
blurry edge
Over an hour later we had weeded as well as edged, even though we had had no intention of staying that long. We especially removed reseeded Geranium ‘A.T. Johnson’ that seems to annoyingly travel around with everything I plant for free. In this case, it had come with some plants from my mother’s garden, along with a much worse thug:
the truly awful Euphorbia ‘Fen’s Ruby’
My mother had purchased this from a catalog and I had implored her to get it out of her garden before it ran rampant…but she liked it. For awhile. Then she agreed with me, but by then it had worked its wiles into all the perennials in the border nearest the house. When her house was sold I brought a few perennials from it to the post office…and also, despite much root-cleaning, the nasty little thug. At the post office, I don’t have time to win the battle so I try to keep Fen’s Ruby edited to a small amount and hope no one falls in love with it and wants some.
Post Office garden after weeding
I had originally planned to make it a rectangular garden but people do insist on cutting that corner so I gave in and left a triangle of lawn.
I still dream of sweet peas along that picket fence. Some of the ones I planted have come up, but in this dry week I wonder how they will do?
I plant one or three of every special kind of tulip there from my yearly collection.
From the Post Office we headed north to Long Beach, stopping to photograph the new fence around Nancy’s garden. Will it be tall enough to keep the deer out? They could easily hop it, but we share her hope that the deer in Long Beach are less greedy that the Ilwaco deer who try to break through my tallest fence. A couple of wires could be added higher up if need be.
Phil and Nancy’s attractive new fence
That’s something that was so much easier about my Seattle city garden: no deer problems!
In Long Beach, I wanted to get the dwarf pampas grass cut back in the garden we call “the big pop-out” which is just south of Boo Boo’s Putt Putt Golf (I am not making that up) on Boulevard. That is a long block south of city hall.
the big pop out, before
In it, a rugosa rose that had behaved itself for years had gone rampant all the way to the edge over the past two years, making it a real chore to weed out the couch grass which had weaseled its way in from the lawn behind the garden.
After a bit of weeding, extreme energy measures became necessary:
two tiger paws
The Cottage Bakery is only one block over, and I was tired, so tired! My tiger paw perked me up for hours. I expect that someday I will write about health woes related to this weakness.
Big Pop Out after
So today my not very elaborate plan involved throwing some ‘Mission Bells’ California poppy seeds in here to fight it out with the rose, whose roots still lurk toward the front. It is a lovely white rugosa rose: ‘Blanc Double de Coubert’ (the double white one). But it will pop up in any perennial that I plant here, so annuals seem like a better idea.
The job created a surprising amount of debris to be dumped at city works….
dumping
These dwarf fireweed caught my eye. No wonder I sometimes find it hard to convince people that it is a weed that needs pulling.
a very ornamental weed
During the whole big pop out time I could have been stressing out about the next job, since as all too usual I found more to do at the pop out than I had planned. My new philosophy this year, of not rushing around and leaving things undone but doggedly finishing one thing before moving on, did feel more satisfying. We can’t always do that….For example, when checking on all the resorts gardens we need to make sure each one gets a visit even though they don’t all get everything done each week. Today, though, it felt good to really do the pop out well.
We drove a bit north to the next job only to see someone else weeding the spot that I’d been aiming at. Oops, well, people cannot wait forever for us to turn up…so we’ll go back later with the new plants for that garden.
We finished the day back in Ilwaco at Ann’s garden. I started five minutes later than Allan because I simply had to walk back and take a couple of photographs at the house at the crest of the hill where Ann used to live. It has a fine new fence:
fence with azalea
And I so admire the way the sidewalk passes between their garden and their hedge.
sidewalk garden
Two of the three dogs had something to say about me taking photos.
attentive audience
I joined Allan a block away in Ann’s garden where we mainly worked on the back yard this time.
Ann’s back garden upon our arrival
Last fall we got the curved flower bed well weeded and mulch. Today we mainly had to address the return of creeping buttercup and shotweed. Allan dug up a big clump of old Siberian iris to make a spot for a birdbath.
Butch and Allan placing the birdbath
They put a big paver underneath and were making sure it was quite level, although Butch says, correctly, that the ground will shift and it will have to be leveled again.
Meanwhile, I weeded an area along the west side…
west side, buttercups
And the iris divisions went in there.
newly planted iris
The sword ferns caught the slanting early evening light.
ferns
ferns and trillium
Allan particularly liked the green and pink contrast on the fading trillium blooms. (They start out white, then turn to pink.)
pink and green
The slanting light made it very difficult to find the hand clippers that I set down….somewhere…so they will stay in the garden till next time. Ann may find them, as she recently found a Ho-mi that Allan had left behind in the fall.
Somehow we lost the start of a perennial sunflower (Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’) that we were going to plant at Ann’s. It is probably in the Long Beach dump pile. Fortunately, I can acquire another piece.
At home, I had time before dark to pull one and a half buckets of weeds and to admire a few flowers.
I love the swirl of petals on this tulip bud.
fringed tulip
a Euphorbia
evening sunshine
long blooming tulips backed with cardoon
white bleeding heart
Finally settling in after dark to write this, I also checked my email. Unusually, I had not done so today. I found a very nice email from Nancy at the port office saying we had left two little plants unplanted in the south side office garden. I immediately knew that they had to be two small santolinas. Argh. She offered to put them in the ground for us but I had not seen the email in time. Allan went down in the dark (only two blocks away) to check on them and they appear to have been planted; we will double check tomorrow. A big oops like that does not feel very professional. Nor does losing the clippers (as usual)…or being so far behind that someone else starts doing the weeding. Or losing a plant (even a free one) along the way. I can’t think of a clever conclusion to that train of thought.
Read Full Post »
We now have this far to go.
