Sunday 16 December 2012

of birds, labels and beekeepers

The gamekeeper at work has suffered a sad loss.  He forgot to shut his chicken house last night, and the fox killed all but one of his hens.  It seems ironic that a gamekeeper, of all people, should lose his poultry in such a way, but it's easy enough to forget to close a pop hole, after a hard day at work.  Christmas and the New Year is a busy season for keepers.  They were shooting on the estate yesterday, and will be again next weekend, and on Boxing Day.  The gamekeeper spoke regretfully of his hens, and how they all had personalities, and would come up to the front door or hop into the back of his daughter's car when she left the tailgate open to load it.  Admittedly she didn't find this last habit entirely endearing, since she sells pies and cakes at farmers' markets, and didn't really want poultry walking about among her stock, but still, the gamekeeper liked his chickens.  Just because your day job involves raising pheasants and then organising for them to be shot doesn't mean that you can't get genuinely fond of birds, in another context.

Taking a trolley of clean and tidy pots of herbaceous plants over to spend the rest of the winter under cover in the polytunnel on The Other Side, I could see something fluttering on the ground in front of the tunnel door.  As I got closer I saw it was two robins, fighting intently and completely silently.  They rolled about in a feathery ball, not squawking or making any cry, pecking at each other's breasts.  From a human perspective the whole contest looked ineffectual and faintly ridiculous, like Rudyard Kipling's account of two butterflies arguing, but from the robins' point of view I suppose it was a deadly combat.  They are belligerent little birds, and it is odd of us to choose them as our favourites to adorn Christmas cards and ornaments.  When I got very close the pair stopped fighting, briefly, and flew half way along the front of the tunnel, then set to again.

The boss was around briefly, issuing indistinct instructions about the price of the elephant trays over a crackly radio link, so I seized the moment to remind him cheerfully that we still needed prices for a few of the Italian topiary plants that were sitting outside the back of the shop.  It turned out that he had just done the labels, which were hanging from the printer, and that the thing I described to him over the radio as a double pompom box thingummy was more properly called a two ball box upright.  At least with that one we were both talking about the same plant.  The Ilex crenata standards defeated me utterly, when I came to try and put labels on the unlabelled ones, and I ended up hiding them all out of sight for the manager to sort out tomorrow.  The new labels included four for I. crenata standards at ninety-something pounds each, and I only had three unlabelled plants, but I did also have two larger ones that were already labelled, but priced at fifty-something pounds, less than the small ones.  I couldn't just swap the labels round because then I'd only have two of the fifty-something pound labels for three plants, and I had six labels for five plants, while one small plant and two large ones appeared to be missing.

A couple bought a standard bay tree, and I warned them to protect the trunk if we got really cold weather, since that was the most vulnerable part of the plant.  For good measure I told them how they could use bay leaves to flavour egg custard, for a very old fashioned taste that went well with cooked fruit.

I came home via a beekeeping co-signatory's house, so that we could sign cheques.  Lots of cheques.  One for a whole year's worth of mailing out the monthly magazine to members.  The person who kindly does that doesn't put her bill in until the end of the year, looking on it as her holiday savings.  Given she would get nothing in the way of interest from her bank it's not a totally daft method of enforced regular saving, as long as she trusts the beekeepers not to go bust.  We owe someone else for candle moulds and sundry printing costs, and the rent on the room for our last meeting, which is payable in arrears, as well as deposits for the next three meetings, which will be held in our preferred hall now that the wretched Zumba class next door has ceased, at least for now.  The bookings forms for next year's meetings were sent out for January, February and April for some reason, with no March.  I would have thought we did want a meeting in March.

Chasing up various U3A group organisers who might be willing to publicise the music society's concerts will have to wait.  I can only cope with one club at a time, after a day at work.

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