dog days of august

It was back to work after my day off.  Overnight rain and the sterling efforts of my colleagues yesterday meant that there wasn't much watering to do, which made a pleasant change.  As the rain lasted on into the morning I took advantage of the early lack of customers and the shelter of the climber tunnel to disentangle some more of the clematis, which was on my list of jobs to do.

By eleven we'd only had about two customers, and I began to think that if it carried on at this rate then even though August is generally a quiet month, we were going to be in serious trouble.  After a late morning flurry trade died again in the first part of the afternoon, before a final small burst late on.  We were all surprised (in a good way) at the final total on the tills.  It is the height of the holiday season, though, and gardens are at their blowsiest, and who is really thinking of serious planting schemes?  At this time of year we are largely selling impulse fixes of colour, Salvia, Verbena and Crocosmia in full flower.  It pays to plan ahead, though.  A pot of C. 'Emily McKenzie' or 'George Davidson' will set you back £9.50, whereas if you had planned ahead and bought corms back in the spring you could have got them for 32p each.

A regular customer, who is actually a keen and year-round gardener, bought a couple of pots of Salvia.  They were an astonishingly lovely shade of blue, and I can see why she fell for them.  Then she began to tell me about her brother aged 87, living alone in Hampstead Garden Suburb in poor health, who had been a twin as she had herself, but their twins were now dead, before explaining that she was chronically deaf and currently between hearing aids, and interupting herself to say that she didn't know why she was telling me all this.  Deafness is so isolating.  It is difficult to embark on a serious discussion of human values and family duties when you have to bellow at somebody, and I stared at her rather helplessly.  I knew why she was telling me all this, but the communication barrier was too great.

The peahen and her chick were foraging around the plant centre.  The chick appears to be thriving.  It is darkening in colour as it grows, and already has a tiny peafowl style tuft on the top of its head.

Overall I wouldn't say I was actively bored, but the time did pass a bit slowly.  But at least I had a watch to monitor its passing (Google are still firing adverts at me.  It will be interesting to see how long the penny takes to drop).

Now the neighbours are using their field to host Sian and Adam's wedding reception, which has a noisy and not awfully attractive disco.  I don't know Sian and Adam from Adam, but hope that they are friends or relatives, and that the neighbours have not taken up renting out the field as a commercial sideline.  It is almost certainly just a favour to somebody they know.  They did one last year for a cousin, and after dark released those wretched Chinese lanterns. It was during a really dry spell, and I felt a mean relief as I saw that the wind direction was not carrying them over our property.