The frost on the car this morning came as a bit of a shock, after the run of mild weather. The car thermometer said that it was minus 2.5C, and I fretted slightly that I hadn't set the heaters to run in the greenhouse and conservatory. I consoled myself with the thought that they should have some reserves of heat to see them through one chilly night, after those sunny days, and anyway, it was too late to do anything about it.
The manager's list of instructions for the weekend asked me to 'do what I could' with the ornamental end-table displays. Given how little plant material we had in stock that was allowed to be outside rather than safely tucked away in a tunnel, but was not a leafless deciduous pot of brown sticks with no display value whatsoever, doing what I could didn't amount to doing very much. I started rationalising the tables, so that each one used a limited range of plants and appeared to have some sort of theme, instead of being an indiscriminate jumble of whatever was not under cover.
Coloured stems featured heavily, and I found some willows with nice furry buds, to develop the stem theme further. Skimmia are allowed to stay out, as are Sarcococca. I have no idea why these two evergreen species are deemed safe to keep outside over winter, when most evergreens are taken in. We offer quite a few varieties of both, and the display tables look better when you stick to one or two different sorts per table, rather than a licorice allsorts jumble. Evergreen Euonymus stay out, and it's worth saving the yellow variegated ones for a yellow themed table, rather than dotting them around through every single display. The Hamamelis were looking good, and there were some Chaenomeles in flower. There is a lot of brown in Hamamelis flowers, and I tried to pick that up in the other plants I used with them, and found some Viburnum tinus that had an apple-blossom tinge in its pink flowers to go with the clear pink of the Chaenomeles.
We had the usual quota of regular customers, fortunately only nice ones, and not any of the ones whose appearance in the plant centre makes your heart sink into your wellingtons. The pleasant couple from Dedham bought a shrub and a couple of bergenias. A charming petite blonde came in, whose mother-in-law also shops with us, so we have to be careful when ordering plants to make it clear which Mrs C. they're for. I could even remember without looking at the list which hellebore she is waiting for, but they haven't arrived yet. There were only two of us on duty, and we only had one till going, which was ample for most of the day, then sudennly in the final hour it got busy with some big trollies going through, and we had a queue, but reached a respectable total for the day's takings in the end.
Back home I put the heaters on. I've scarcely run them this winter, so I shall indulge myself. The pots of Geranium maderense in the greenhouse and Streptocarpus in the conservatory looked fine, so no harm was done last night. The Norfolk Island Pine had blown over. I forgot to right it this morning, but as it still looks green and alive I left it resting in the embrace of the honeysuckle along the veranda, in the hope it might get some shelter. It might make it through the next 6-8 weeks alive, and so on to spring, but it might not. Better not to be optimistic.
No comments:
Post a Comment