shopping and errands

I succumbed to the lure of Anemone pavonina, and bought three at the Beth Chatto nursery.  There weren't any really dark pink ones out for sale, but I found a mid pink, a white with pink streaks on the reverse of the petals, and a soft yellow.  Either dark pink is not a common colour break, or it sells much faster than the paler colours.  I really ought to try and propagate mine, since I have one good strong pink, though I think I tried sowing seed a couple of years ago and the pot went mouldy. I was disciplined, though, and did not walk around the whole nursery looking at everything else they had and picking up a couple of extra plants while I was at it.  I did notice they had Cardamine quinquefolia, should I want any.

Shopping and errands don't half take time.  After getting the anemones I stopped to drop off some empties in the bottle bank, then went into Colchester for layers' pellets and acrylic paint.  The paint was not urgent, since it is for the coloured dahlia stakes, and I'm not about to tackle the dahlia bed this week, but the pellets were, since we've practically run out, and the shop where I buy cheap acrylic is on the same trading estate as the feed merchant.

Then I needed food, otherwise I was going to be living out of the store cupboard, and I fancied some fresh vegetables.  And was running out of toothpaste and loo roll.  The car needed filling up, and I was almost out of cash.  That meant a visit to Tesco.  I still prefer Waitrose, but Tesco has a cash machine and a filling station, plus a dry cleaner and I had some dry cleaning to drop off.  It was not the best moment to have chosen to take dry cleaning in, since the man in the kiosk was busy cutting a key before our eyes while the queue lengthened.

Before I could repot the dahlias I needed compost, which meant a visit to B&Q.  Their compost is both cheap and good, or at least it was good last year.  They may have changed the recipe since then.  I am afraid it contains peat, on the other hand, I would feel more guilt about using peat if I didn't know that the quantity I consume in potting compost is dwarfed by the amount the Irish burn in power stations.  I thought B&Q might have sold me some fish, blood and bone, since it's early spring and prime time to give the borders a sprinkle but no, they had run out.  B&Q bargain compost comes in 125 litre bales, which are quite unwieldy, and I accepted the offer of help loading it into the car, but got bored waiting for a member of staff to come and went and did it myself.

And that was most of the morning gone.