There were just two of us in again today, due to staff sickness, and the watering took until gone half past ten. It's got to the time of year when you really don't want plants to sit too wet in their pots, so rather than spraying water over everything it is a case of trying as far as possible to look at each pot, or at least take a view about the qualities of that supplier's compost and the thirstiness of the species by looking at the ones at the front of the row. Someone had managed to get a knot in one of the hoses, which I only discovered once I'd got it uncoiled and running.
Then I thought I'd better try and package up the mail order plants that our mail order person would have boxed up, if she hadn't been ill. I don't normally get involved in packing plants for despatch, and my first task was to box up an Ilex verticillata over four feet high. Despite much talking about how we ought to get some dedicated packaging, and even ordering in samples, we don't have any purpose made mail order boxes. Instead we reuse boxes that supplies to us arrived in, supplemented by the owners and staff donating any suitable ones that have come their way. Indeed, having forgotten to take my own bags to Tesco on Friday I grabbed a couple of frozen chip boxes instead of using disposable plastic carriers partly because they looked good solid ones that would come in useful at work.
None of the boxes were remotely deep enough to accommodate an American holly nearly five feet tall, pot included. I watered the plant, which was a shade on the dry side, put the pot in two plastic bags so that it wouldn't leak on its packaging, and put the pot in a garish box that originally held a leaf blower. Folding the flaps of the leaf blower box up and taping them together with parcel tape got me about half way up the plant. I thought I'd better reinforce the inside of the parcel, so stuck two canes inside the pot, taped the tops together and tied the holly to the canes with soft string. Then I thought I'd better put some packing in the box so that the pot couldn't rattle around, and had to scrumple up most of an old copy of The Times retrieved from the staff room. Then I couldn't find any bubble wrap to put round the top half of the plant, and had to make a cardboard hood for it out of a large sheet I found in the pot store, after I'd carefully prised out some vicious metal staples. The end product looked like a homemade jukebox from the set of an extrememly tacky stage production put on by nine year olds. Then I couldn't work out from the paperwork whether I had to book the parcel in with the parcel company or whether that had already been done. The entire process took the best part of an hour, and we can't possibly be making money on the transaction, but at least all those years spent watching Blue Peter were not wasted. Maybe one day we'll buy some proper packaging materials.
The other parcel defeated me utterly, because I had the name and address of a customer, but nothing to say what plant I was supposed to be sending him. I rather guessed it might be the Ceanothus sitting on the floor at the back of the shop, but rather guessing didn't seem good enough. I rang the number on the paper with the name and address and got an answering machine, so left an apologetic message pleading staff sickness and asking if he could possibly let me know what plant we were sending him, so that I didn't pack off the wrong one. Marks out of ten for professionalism, about half a point. Marks for hand knitted out of tofu, at least a hundred and ten per cent.
Over lunch it began to get busy, and I was called back to help at the tills twenty minutes into my break. Yesterday was one of those days when customers knew what they wanted, and presented themselves at the checkout with £150 trolleys that they had filled up unassisted. Today's customers wanted help and advice in spades. I was lucky in that I got my specialist subject twice, plants for arid sites, and was able to steer the first couple towards a pineapple broom, and persuade the second dry garden owner that Cotoneaster would be a much better bet than Sorbus in those conditions. My colleague drew the short straw, getting the man with the garden plan. I wondered if he was the same one who had rung up earlier asking whether we did discounts for large orders, to which my reply, courteously worded, had boiled down to Speak to the owners, but No.
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