talk two

Another day, another talk.  I have mixed feelings about doing talks on summer afternoons.  On the one hand, it seems like a waste of good gardening time, but on the other hand it is nicer than flogging up and down the A12 in the dark in driving rain or fog.  Today's audience were a garden club, fairly close to home so no A12 required anyway.  They were a nice bunch, though I was disappointed not to find more of a plant stall.  I spoke to them before, years ago, and bought a rather jolly bromeliad which produces dangling green and red flowers on stalks.  I keep forgetting its name, although it is about the most common variety going, but still have it in the conservatory. The individual rosettes die after flowering, but it always makes more.

I came home via the Clacton Garden Centre, so that I could stock up on Thomas Treats and horticultural grit.  The fat indignant tabby has developed a passion for Thomas Treats, and while she never used to get any kind of titbit or special food because she was such a good doer that she didn't need coaxing to eat, it began to seem rather harsh to penalise her robust health with a Spartan regime.  So now she gets three biscuits, and three only, after breakfast.  She shouts for more, but as I tell her, they are meant as treats, not as meal replacements.  The clue's in the name.

While I was there I had a quick look at the plants, and discovered they had an unexpectedly good conifer section, with some quite unusual varieties priced rather modestly, so found myself buying another dwarf pine, a triangular Picea and a marvellously bun-shaped Thuja.  Standing in their pots outside the front door, waiting to be planted tomorrow, the Picea and the Thuja look like an introduction to cubism in conifer form, plant life reduced to the sphere and triangle.  The only thing that diminished my pleasure in my new conifers was the discovery that I could have bought Pinus sylvestris 'Chantry Blue' which I got from a local semi-retired conifer grower, now by appointment only, for about four pounds less than I paid for it.

To console myself I added a canna to the basket.  It didn't come with a name, but I liked the purplish tinge of the foliage, and the fact that it had four separate shoots.  I expect the flowers will be bright red or orange, either of which would be good.  Cannas seem to like life in the conservatory, out of the wind and frost free with a bit of extra warmth.  My existing plant has cherry red flowers, a good shade, and rather narrow (for a canna) mid green foliage.  Unfortunately, when I checked my spreadsheet of things planted to remind myself what it was called, I discovered I hadn't recorded it.

Another evening, another committee meeting.  It is the turn of the beekeepers, so I had better have a look at our online bank account and find out how much money we have got, so that I can share the good news.  And try and work out what is owed for raffle prizes to the person who organises the raffle.  She gives me her supermarket receipts, and I stick them in a file, but it is still difficult to keep track of all the little bags of change that people thrust into my hands at meetings for raffle proceeds, tea money, sales of leaflets at country fairs and everything else that they get up to.  Still, I don't have any more talks booked for six weeks, so once the blizzard of beekeeping financial activity engendered by the Tendring Show is out of the way, I can forget about charity volunteering and the Big Society can get on without me for a month.