When I arrived at work my colleagues and the boss were already gathered in the office. As is the British way when something has been a less than resounding success, they were not talking about the open weekend but about ash trees. They hailed me, and asked where the ash tree got its name. I replied that it came from an old northern European language word for spear (hedging my bets as to exactly which language). I looked it up in Archie Miles' book Silva when I got home, and it is Anglo Saxon. Aesc was their word for spear. I retain this nugget because I use it in my woodland talks, but that's the only time I've ever been asked.
My first task, after a little bit of watering in the tunnels, was to make use of the newly tidy greenhouse and turn some pieces of Aeonium given to us by a customer into cuttings. There were three different varieties, one green, one green with pinkish tips and one bronze, rather nice. I've taken them at home with a good strike rate, but never this late in the season. You just cut the rosettes off with some stem, strip off some of the lower leaves, and put them into compost. Around the edges of the pot is advised by some experts because it gives better drainage. I've never used hormone rooting powder on succulents. If they take, I shall ascribe it to my superior propagation technique, while if they fail I shall blame the manager for watering them incorrectly. I made two pots of each, and negotiated to take the remains home to try my luck at rooting the leftovers.
I was assigned for the rest of the day to help the longest standing employee weed the pots of herbaceous plants over on The Other Side. Weeds have germinated at a ferocious rate, which is rather disheartening for her, when she has weeded them all already this season, so recently that she can clearly remember doing it. In an ideal world we wouldn't have pots sitting around for long enough to have time to grow weeds, but it can't be avoided given the range of varieties we offer. They come in at the start of the season, some we pot up ourselves to grow on, and they stay with us until sold. If a designer has specified a dozen of a given plant that can absorb half of our stock for the year in one fell swoop, but we can easily get to October and find we still have several pots left. Weeding is more fun with a bench at the right height to work at, and when I don't have to worry about dropping compost on the gravel, and I charged along at a fine rate. I did end the day with a large black disc of compost on my uniform shirt. The fastest way to clean a pot that is covered in weeds, rather than just having the odd hairy bittercress, is to knock the rootball out of the pot so that you can get your thumbs into the sides just below the surface. The whole weedy top layer then falls away, to be replaced with fresh compost, but to get the old compost to fall straight into a bin I go back to the effective but shirt-destroying technique of resting the rootball against my stomach.
It was due to be a busy week for deliveries, Cambridge this morning, and Norwich on Friday, with less distant places from Tuesday to Thursday. The older gardener who doubles as a delivery driver was despatched with the van, loaded with olive trees, standard bays and phormiums. Mid morning, word came that the fan belt on the van had broken and it was in a service station near the M11. This was not a good start to the gardener's week, or ours, given that we need the business and he was saddled with the task of getting the van repaired. Apparently the customer was extremely cross at the delay and gave the owner a hard time over the phone. By late afternoon we were starting to get worried, given that the gardener is an insulin dependent diabetic, and we feared he set off without his lunch or his insulin, not expecting to be all day. He told us that he had somebody coming to fix the van but not until mid afternoon, and that the battery on his phone was running flat. By close of play he still wasn't back, and we hadn't heard any more. The manager and the owner will see the story through to its conclusion. The rest of us went home, lucky us.
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