Today seemed to be a day of odd phone calls and peculiar customers. They kicked off with the woman who called to say that she had meant to buy six of a plant with green leaves and red berries when she came in at the weekend, but had only taken five although she had paid for six. She couldn't remember the name of the plant, and she was calling from work so couldn't check the label. My mind boggled gently as to whether she was expecting a refund for the sixth plant over the phone, or wished me to reserve another one for her, except that she couldn't tell me what it was, and I was expected, psychically, to know. I thought the most likely candidate was Skimmia japonica subsp. reevesiana, and put one aside, with a note to go up to the office for the owner. I suppose part of the lesson is that we shouldn't allow customers to go through their own trolleys, saying 'I've got three of these' and 'I've got two of those', but should insist on a staff member checking everything through. We won't. We don't have enough staff, when things are busy, and like parents losing control of their teenagers, we don't have our customers sufficiently in check.
She was followed by the woman who wanted advice on potting her rhododendron. Using my psychic powers once again, I was supposed to be able to tell her how many times a week she should water a plant of unknown size I hadn't seen, planted in a very large pot I hadn't seen either, and stood in a position I couldn't see, in weather conditions yet to be determined. She had already put a thick layer of crocks in the very large pot, and filled it with compost, and was now wondering whether the crocks were unnecessary, or harmful, and if the pot was too big for the plant to move up to it in once go. Sometimes I think our customers must be lonely, or drunk.
Then there was the woman who wanted to know whether it was safe to compost the lichen off her conservatory roof, because there was so much that it wouldn't fit in the wheelie bin. I asked whether she had used any chemical cleaner to remove it, and on being told not gave my considered opinion that while it wasn't something recommended for making great compost, it wouldn't be toxic or harmful. She said she would dump it at the bottom of the garden.
In the afternoon there was the man who wanted two Kalmia latifolia to be mail ordered to him. He seemed quite put out to be asked whether he would like a particular variety, saying he didn't know there was more than one. He didn't know whether he had acid soil, something Kalmia require. He said it was clay, and I had to explain gently that clay was a description of texture, not a measure of acidity, and asked whether he could grow rhododendrons, but he didn't know that either. He wanted us to mail order him some peat as well, but I suggested that would be so prohibitively expensive that he would do better to source it locally. He was planning to put the two Kalmia in a north west facing position, and Hillier's dictionary says they flower better in full sun, but by then I was so exhausted with trying to give him sensible advice that I thought it wasn't my job to talk him out of Kalmia, if that was what he had decided he wanted.
The woman who rang up wanting to know how to plant her trees, because she had lost the instruction leaflet, came as a relief. She asked what to do, I talked her through the hole, the stake, the tie, and the watering, and she seemed to understand what I was saying and be grateful. Not so the truculent couple who wanted to know where to find Eucryphia, which were not in alphabetical order. They never are, because they live with the shade loving plants, not on the main shrub beds. Eucryphia are beautiful shrubs or small trees, flowering in late summer when the garden can be starting to run out of oomph, but they have their own particular requirements, which are for a cool root run and a sunny top. I told the couple this, once I'd shown them where to find Eucryphia, and they were fearfully put out. They had seen some flowering at Westonbirt a couple of weeks ago and determined to have one, but the spot they had in mind would not provide a cool root run. I suggested ways of making it cooler, but they just sulked, and said they would have to think about it.
When the phone rang and it was a man with a strong Dutch accent, and a name I didn't catch, asking for the manager, I assumed it was one of our suppliers. However, on further conversation it turned out that he was not a supplier but the vicar's husband. I know him by sight, and he is not Dutch, but Africaans. He called into the plant centre last week in search of grape vines when the manager had the day off, and I had to break it to him that the manager was off all this week as well, and would not be available to give advice on culinary grapes until next Monday. I didn't dare put him on to the boss, since I'd already been in trouble for asking about the dimensions and scab resistance of various plants I couldn't find in the plant centre. The boss has a fabulous database of plant information he uses to print his labels, but he won't make it available to the staff, I think in case of industrial espionage, so in order to check the details of any plant you don't know, you have to be able to find one and read the label, or scrabble around in the dictionary. I do my best, but given that we sell several thousand different species and varieties I'm not going to remember everything about all of them.
Addendum The banana bread was not too sweet, and my colleagues were duly appreciative. It is a Jill Duplex recipe. Cream 175 grammes brown sugar into 125 grammes butter, add two beaten eggs one at a time, fold in half of the total 280 grammes of flour with a teaspoon of bicarb, loosen with up to 125 millilitres of milk and add the other half of the flour. Mix in three mashed up ripe bananas, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and 75 grammes chopped nuts. The recipe said walnuts, I used pecans because that's what I had, and I should think it would work with any oily nut. Or probably dates, or raisins. The recipe said to add a pinch of salt but I didn't. Cook in a greased loaf tin for around an hour at 180 degrees C. My loaf took pretty much exactly the hour on the lowest shelf of the baking oven of a four door Aga, and I put foil over it for the second half hour. Cool partially in the tin before turning out. The recipe says it will remain moist for days, but I'd be surprised if there's any of this one left by Wednesday.
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