back to work

All good things come to an end, holidays included, and this morning when my alarm clock went off at six, it heralded the start of a working day.  Armed with my packed lunch and souvenir box of Leek fudge for my colleagues, with a long sleeved t-shirt under my uniform shirt now that it's the second half of September, it was back to work time.  Back to school day for the owners' son, too. September's like that.  The equinox has just passed, and the evenings are rapidly drawing in.

Not much had changed while I was away.  From the display of new plants outside the shop I gathered they'd taken a delivery of a consignment of shrubs, including Skimmia  x confusa 'Kew Green', which I remembered somebody wanted, on our list of customers searching for plants currently out of stock.  She hadn't yet been crossed off the list, so I rang her.  Whether she will come for the plant I'm not entirely sure, since I was left with the impression that she was elderly, lacked independent transport, was in the habit of ordering plants, but possibly lived with relatives.  In the course of the day I spotted some Cistus another customer was after, and two varieties of Hamamelis on the list. It was worth making the call about the Hamamelis, since the customer after phoning a friend decided to take both, even though they were only in 3 litre pots and not the 5 litres she'd originally specified.

The need for watering is dropping, now the nights are longer and dewier and the days cooler.  My colleague and I watered odd dry pots from cans, but it wasn't worth getting the hoses out, or running the overhead irrigation.  The compost in some pots was quite wet enough already, and it doesn't do plants any good at all to sit around in soggy compost.  In hot summer weather you can at least rely on them drying out in a day or two, but not by this stage of the year.

The owner, who wanted us to lock up at end of play while she took the dog for a walk before it got too dark, gave me an anxious half hour when she insisted that she had given me a key to the house about a month ago.  I have noticed myself becoming more absent minded with middle age, but I really didn't remember that at all.  I'm sure it would have made an impression on me, finally being given my own key after working there for ten years.  I remember being lent a key, against a Sunday when the owners were due to be away, and the only keyholding member of staff scheduled to work that day was going though a particularly unreliable patch, but I thought I gave it back.  I went and searched the glove compartment of my car, since that would have been the sensible place to keep a key if I'd had one.  There's no point in keeping it at home, since I'd probably forget to pick it up on the morning when I turned out to need it, and I don't want it sloshing around my handbag, which is quite crowded enough already, not to mention the risk of it being accidentally flicked out when I'm looking for something else.  By the time we'd tilled up and shut the shop the owner had found me a key, so I suspect that my version of events that I recently had a key overnight but gave it back is correct.  A key, after a decade with the business.  Maybe next it will be how to do till reconciliations.