Another day to remember! One of those Fun Fun Fun Days even after I took my little red wagon out for some serious work in the garden! We had spent the morning at the Artisan Fair at the Oysterville Schoolhouse. Loved the music, the crafts, seeing so many friends among the vendors and the attendees! We could have stayed all day but Marta and Charlie and I all heard the rhododendrons calling.
It was the out-of-control Jean Maries along the west side of the house begging us to give them a trim…please! I’m not sure I did any trimming last year so they’ve had two glorious seasons of non-stop growth. Enough is enough so… off to work we went!
Charlie, looking dapper in one of Nyel’s old cowboy hats, was the bagger. Marta, slathered in sunscreen and also shaded by a wide-brimmed chapeau took one pair of clippers and I, the other. We had our “measuring stick” (fashioned years ago by Nyel-the-Rhodie-Trimmer) and we bravely began.
Our method was to cut as carefully as we could, toss the cuttings into my little red wagon, whereupon Charlie transferred them into those huge plastic garbage bags “for outdoor use”. We worked on two sections of rhodies — about 1/3 of the total length of what awaited — and Charlie filled three of those huge bags.
Just as we were about to call it a day, Marta discovered a little tree frog clinging to a leaf that she was about to cut and toss. She and Charlie rescued him before he went sailing into the wagon, making sure he was happy on a nearby leaf. (I had wanted to transfer him to the fuchsias in the hanging baskets on the porch but my suggestion was over-ridden.) Somehow, Froggy had let it be known to Marta and Charlie that he was a Rhododendron Froggy, not a Fuchsia Froggy.
So… there you have it. Another fabulous Saturday in Beautiful Downtown Oysterville. And did I mention that many folks stopped to talk with us on their way to or from the Artisan Fair, but none mistook us for Tom Sawyer…