Whales Part 1

One more week of August to go. It just feels good to say that, August feels like the hottest month of the year. I don’t want to let my guard down because September isn’t much different but it sure feels that way. Fall decorations are starting to show up in all the regular places and a few football games will probably start next month, anything for a little hope. I have definitely upped my irrigation game at home and at Garden Works. Earlier in August we were getting enough rain to get through until the next little shower but now I believe we may be heading into a more drought situation. I don’t wanna let the ground get too dry to the point where it’s just difficult to penetrate the first couple of inches of soil.

I have 22 zones on my irrigation system at home and I have increased the time of each zone that runs now so I can get a deeper watering in order for those roots to get what they need. I will run 11 zones one day then the next 11 zones the next. At the nursery our plants are in containers so they stay thirsty all the time. We have quite a few zones to irrigate our bushes and trees, but it’s almost impossible to get the water deep enough to do much good. The bedding plants have to be watered every day at least once and sometimes twice so everything looks good when customers come into shop what I consider a great bedding plant selection for this time of year.

We are about to put up some Shade cloth because our first planting of pansies will begin early in September, like in a couple of weeks. The 3 gallon chrysanthemum crop that we grow here at Garden Works is looking great, it looks like they’re going to be record size by the time we get finished growing them and bringing them upfront to sell possibly next week. Just knowing that we will be filling those pots with soil for pansies and snapdragons so soon is enough to cool my body down just a little bit. It is a struggle to get them through these kinds of temperatures and we have high hopes that somewhere mid September we see some kind of break in the weather. We grow them under shade cloth for the first few weeks just to cool them down and make them feel at home.

Mimi and I have now pulled everything from our vegetable garden that was just being too dramatic and causing us to worry about watering every time we came home. We have narrowed it down to those plants that have agreed to chill out! I wrote in an earlier article that we were going to see how far we could bring our snapdragons and fox gloves through the summer. My snapdragons were still blooming, and my fox gloves were hanging in there, but I have lost my zest for knowing how much farther we can take them. They’re gone now. Last week I thought that Mimi and I might be grandparents by the time this article came out. As of this writing, we still are not grandparents but I think it’s any minute now. Max checked in with us last night and cried Wolf. We laughed, but we also said once is funny, but don’t do that anymore! I had my boots laced up before I even knew he was joking. I just can’t wait. Maybe next week I will declare grandparenthood.

I have been writing about a trip that Mimi and I just returned from. We spent some time on the Pacific coast of the US and Canada. In the last article we had visited some beautiful gardens and took some great pictures and got some ideas that will last us forever. Just this morning we spent an hour with our entire crew showing pictures of some of the new ideas that came our way in the form of photographs of the beautiful combinations of plants and flowers. Now it was our turn to relax in a different way. When we departed Butchart Gardens We had a 3 Hour drive to a place on Vancouver Island called Port Renfew. The farther north we went the more it began to look like Big Sur and the California coastline that we love so much. We Google mapped our way to the Airbnb house that Mimi found for us to relax at for the next five nights. The house that we stayed in was very simple and modern, which is what we like. As we walked in the front door, we could see that the entire back wall of the house was made of glass facing the Puget sound and Mount Olympus (8,000 ft) on the other side of the sound.

We got moved in and plugged in our music and kicked back on our porch where it was cool enough that we both needed a light jacket while we stared forward at our beautiful view. There were a few trails that led down to the coastline and along the way they had little areas where you could sit and stop and watch with binoculars for birds or whales, whichever came first. Mimi has gotten into birdwatching lately so she had recently purchased a good pair of binoculars that she carries with her just about everywhere she goes now. We slowly made our way down the cliff on a trail and sat at the chairs and table that were set up along the way I think three times. We couldn’t see any whales on that walk and we really didn’t know what we were looking for since neither of us had seen whales before.

I caught a quick glimpse of of whale a long time ago when me and a buddy were in Seattle to climb Mount Rainier, as we were traveling across one of the straights we spotted a fin, but that’s as close as I got to seeing one so I officially say I have never seen a whale before, plus it’s funner to see a new thing together with someone when you both haven’t experienced it before. On our way to the house that we were going to stay we found a grocery store and got a few things for the fridge and the cupboards. That night we went out to the closest town and found a bite to eat. The atmosphere was very slow paced just like we hoped it would be. While there are tourist up this way it’s not just packed, we never had to wait in line for anything. It looked like it was going to be just perfect. We both like to wake up early and drink a cup of coffee so that was one of the things that we stocked up on and the house had two or three different ways of making a good cup of coffee so I figured nothing could go wrong from here. After our morning cup that first morning we had planned to drive to the closest beach and take a one hour hike to get there and then explore and comb the beaches for anything we could see.

We had an idea that it would be fairly breezy and cool so we were dressed right and brought a little water and my good camera and some good binoculars. We had all day to hike through the Sequoias and get to the beach and do whatever we wanted to do with no schedule after that. The night before we learned as much as we could about the tide coming and going so we could time our trip with the low tides so we could walk farther and safely down the beach. With the tide being low it left tide pools that were full of things I’ve never seen before. We were walking along rocky Craggy beaches that were mostly made up of shells from mussels and lots of other things that I just don’t recognize. We kept one eye on the big water in case we spotted some Humpback whales or Orcas passing through.

We joined a forum the night before where the local folks were letting people know where they had spotted groups of whales the night before. Reading about the sightings made it fun because we knew they were there, We just had to train our eyes to see them. In the tide pools, we were seeing sea urchins, jellyfish, squid, and lots of other things that one day I will have to learn more about. The water was clear and shallow so everything looked magnified, it was really beautiful. It was easy to get caught up, staring into these pools at all the life and it seemed like the longer you looked into them the more could be seen. Because we were so mesmerized by what we were seeing sometimes we were together and sometimes we were far apart on the beach. There were a few other people out but never crowded. I had the same camera with me that I brought to Uganda and it all came back to me how to use it although taking pictures of zebras and gorillas is way different than taking pictures of sea urchins so I had a little bit of relearning to do.

Mimi was taking pictures with her iPhone which came out really great as well. It was cool to see the kelp that was floating in some of the tidepools and some had washed up on the beaches. Kelp Looks like something from another planet with its long tentacles leading to one big nodule at the top. We saw some kids having kelp wars. They were swinging them like David and Goliath and letting them fly at each other. Of course one of the big brothers played a little bit too hard and socked his little sister in the head with one. That’s when the parents intervened and stopped that little battle. I guess Goliath won in this case. When we had finished our little picnic on the beach and felt ready for the one hour hike back to the car we took our time and enjoyed the walk through the giant trees covered in moss. That night we cooked our meal in our kitchen and hung out on the porch until we just couldn’t stay awake any longer.

To be continued next week!