West Seattle, Washington
03 Sunday
That’s Longfellow Creek Farm — a quarter-acre at 2311 SW Myrtle (just off Delridge; map) where Growing Washington is inviting you to a “community-garden restoration work party” noon-4 pm April 19. Help is needed raking leaves, clipping brambles, spreading mulch, weed-whacking, and painting. The goal is to restore the site into a “functioning, food-producing garden,” and volunteers will be first in line for free organic produce — once it’s grown. They’d like you to let them know you’ll be there; register during the next week by using the contact info here.
Never mind the April chill, here’s news to warm a gardener’s heart: The schedule’s in for West Seattle-area Master Gardener clinics: The MGs will be at McClendon’s (White Center but close enough to WS!) 10 am-2 pm Saturdays starting this weekend — April 5-Sept. 13, and they’ll be at the West Seattle Farmers’ Market 10 am-2 pm Sundays, April 27-Sept. 14. They’re there to answer your home-gardening questions or help you identify specimens. The Master Gardeners’ annual citywide plant sale is at the Center for Urban Horticulture, May 5-6; West Seattle has many great plant sales in the months ahead too, and you’ll find them on our Events list page, along with other events such as the annual West Seattle Garden Tour.
(photo by Jim Dawson)
The Seattle Chinese Garden at South Seattle Community College not only is getting ready to resume free tours (March 8 is the first one) and preparing to add a new feature, it’s getting ready to train a new crop of volunteers, with an intriguing training program:Read More
Too good not to share immediately (the deadline to apply is Friday) – someone in West Seattle just might be perfect:Read More
Rhonda from Beach Drive Blog (who also runs this week’s Citizen Rain “Blog Of The Week,” The Mortgage Porter) reminds us all that today is your last chance to visit the Walker Rock Garden till next year. She has a nice photo gallery from the garden here.
A tongue-in-cheek note accompanied the photo of recently harvested carrots from a Gatewood garden …
The e-mail subject line: AMAZING WEST SEATTLE CARROT. The text follows. Perhaps a flood of comments from insistent carrot lovers will force the gardeners to bask in their deserved spotlight.
We just pulled this pair of intertwined carrots from our garden in Gatewood and thought you should know about them. Feel free to publish this incredible photo on your blog — we have decided to keep it in the public domain and not pursue monetary rewards. In fact we humbly wish to remain anonymous.
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That could be the fruit from your overladen trees, filling a car and eventually bellies, rather than rotting in your yard or on your sidewalk. Aviva sent us the photo and this explanation:
Got Fruit?
We’ve got pickers! It’s that time of year again when neighborhood fruit trees are laden with ripe pears, apples, and plums. Perhaps you’ve seen a tree in your neighborhood with fruit starting to fall. Maybe you even own one of those trees, but never get around to getting the ladder out to pick, and the canner out to make plum preserves.
This year, consider contacting the Community Fruit Tree Harvest, an organization which matches volunteer harvesters with fruit tree owners. Fruit is picked and delivered to organizations such as the West Seattle Food Bank.
Fruit should be pesticide-free, worm-free, and on the tree. If you know of a tree, would like to pick, or know of a organization in West Seattle who could benefit from the harvest, contact aviva@duwamish.net or info@lawnandgardenhotline.org.
They put on what is literally one of West Seattle’s most beautiful events of the summer … and just a few weeks after their latest success, they’re already looking toward next summer, with an eye on you and your talents. Click ahead to hear from the people behind the WS Garden Tour:Read More
The weather looks relatively good, knock wood. This is the weekend that Alki is awash in art, Shakespeare in the Park holds court at Camp Long, and we WSers are “Stuffing the Bus” at the Farmers’ Market for WestSide Baby‘s biggest annual diaper drive, among many other things (including a few events outside WS that might interest you) — click ahead!Read More
Bite Schmite; not a single reason to leave West Seattle this weekend. Harry Potter on campus! Parade! Free outdoor movie! Belly dancing! The WS Garden Tour! And that’s only the beginning (click ahead):Read More
Great news for garden lovers — organizers tell us tickets are still left for this weekend’s West Seattle Garden Tour. At your leisure, as long as it’s between 9 am and 5 pm Sunday, you will get to go gawk at “an eclectic mix of eight residential gardens” and hear from guest lecturer Marianne Binetti. You can even buy tickets online if you do it by tomorrow, or you can get tix in person up through tour day at a variety of locations including ArtsWest, West Seattle Nursery, Capers, True Value, and Metro Market.
–Sidewalk Cinema has finalized the list of what it’s showing during the West Seattle outdoor movie series in July and August.
–The Seattle Chinese Garden project near SSCC in east WS just got $1.2 million from one of Seattle’s sister cities (Chongqing, China).
–The P-I paid a visit to our gas-war intersection (Fauntleroy/Alaska, still both below $3 as of our last driveby a few hours ago).
If you see this before the Farmers’ Market closes @ 2 pm: the produce/plants booth at the SE corner has organic purple green onions, $2/bunch. And if you’re looking for a present for a mom who gardens, more booths than ever have plants today — though our fave remains Langley Fine Gardens and its often-unusual offerings.
Sorry we didn’t hear about this any sooner. Through 5 pm today, the Furry Faces Foundation animal-rescue group is selling hanging plant baskets – or the components to make your own – in the courtyard next to Hotwire.
Checked out the WS Farmers’ Market a few minutes into opening day, and we are thrilled to see that our personal faves are back, including Eats Market Cafe, Herban Feast with its strawberry-lavender lemonade, and best of all, Langley Fine Gardens, which brings over beautiful plants from its Vashon nursery, including exotic solanums like the one at left (3 for $8!). The market’s open today till 2.
Two Three (adding one since original post) questions arrived in the e-mailbox today. We have some thoughts on the first two but not a clue on the second third, so we’re throwing them out to the wonderful WSB readership to answer via comments on this post:
#1 — A new WS arrival wants to plant a vegetable garden and is looking for advice on “good times to plant, and good vegetables that thrive here.” (We had success with cabbage, lettuce, and spinach some years back. Planting time would be now, though, since those are mostly cool-season veggies. What else?)
#2 (added 10:16 pm) — A local family is moving from one WS location to another and plans to handle it themselves. Recommendations for who to use for trucks/etc. for self-moving? (We had a good experience with the 35th/Morgan U-Haul, but that was loooong ago.)
#3 — Someone else reports a woodpecker “attacking” their house. For now, they put a rock in the resulting hole (photo below), but they’re wondering what else they can do to discourage it from further attacks.
We actually consider 13 a lucky number, so this is bound to be a great weekend. Garden plants for sale, free family fun courtesy of the WS YMCA, tons of tunes, and surprises as always — one click away:
Until this article today on the stinky seaweed phenomenon that has frequently plagued Fauntleroy for years, and apparently now is spreading, we didn’t know the seaweed in question was called “sea lettuce.” One thing to take away from the story: the valuable reminder that runoff from everything we do eventually finds our way into the Sound. Just one valuable step you could take: don’t use fertilizer on your lawn or in your garden; enrich your soil (Cedar Grove compost from recycled yard waste is our fave) instead.
Fauntleroy Creek (across from the ferry dock) is worth a visit sometime soon if it’s not someplace you regularly visit. Not only is salmon season revving up, it’s also the annual blooming time for the official favorite flower of WSB, Darwin’s barberry, which comprises an entire hedge at the creek overlook but still hasn’t caught on as a garden plant (aside from a spray on Genesee Hill, one along Beach Drive, and one along Fauntleroy; let us know if you’ve seen others).
Actually, they’re not particularly fragrant. But if you want to see quite a sight, check out the yard full of sunflowers on the north side of Admiral, just west of 63rd. (Sorry I don’t have a photo; we’re going to add images to WSB one of these days …)
E-mail tip says this week’s edition of “Landscapers’ Challenge” on HGTV features a West Seattle family. I haven’t seen this show before but the premise sounds awesome … now THAT’S a makeover I’d be interested in. (HGTV is channel 68 on Comcast.)
A WS Blog visitor forwarded us this e-mail overnight … won’t get to head out and independently verify it till later, but it looks like the garden shop on the north edge of the Junction is pulling up stakes:
Farewell from In Bloom
When we first opened the store in November 2003 it was with the dream of creating a welcoming environment to showcase and sell the things we loved: garden accessories, house plants, vintage pottery, home decor, and local crafts.
In Bloom has lived up to many of our dreams, providing us the opportunity to meet many wonderful customers and artists, as well as giving us an outlet to showcase fine products and creative ideas. Unfortunately the demands of running a store have taken their toll on our health, happiness, and well-being. And so, with our hearts full of warm feelings and our heads full of happy memories, we are closing the store in August 2006.
Sorry to hear it. That’s a tough location, right at the edge of the business district, but one that we think will be a boom zone within a few years — these nice folks may just have been ahead of their time.
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