an unexpectedly busy day

Day Two in the plant centre turned out to be more successful than I was expecting.  The gale force winds that had been forecast didn't materialise (though I think they are coming, listening to the shipping forecast on the way home) and while it was a bit breezy, not too many pots blew over.  And trade, after an incredibly slow start, picked up so that we ended the day at quite a respectable total.  True, we were helped by one customer who bought three multi-stemmed birch trees and spend over five hundred quid, but even without her the day's takings wouldn't have been a disgrace.

I pushed on with the display tables, and managed to redo another half dozen, though the shortage of suitable plant material had not miraculously remedied itself in the night, and I felt distinctly gravelled for lack of matter.  Customers bought things out of the ones I'd already done, which at one level was very gratifying, and at another a nuisance as I had to scrabble around looking for substitutes to plug the gaps.  Two plants of a silver leafed dead nettle went, to two different customers, and that was almost certainly down to the display as they hadn't attracted any interest in days, stuck in alphabetical order between the Kniphofias and the Leucanthemums.  My colleague who was tidying the roses yesterday kept a tally of each rose we sold, and got quite excited when he hit ten.  I think we were supposed to keep it up for him today, but I forgot.  Tidying plants and presenting them attractively can induce customers to buy them, even though a good gardener sets out with a list, or at least a clear idea of the spaces they wish to fill, and should not be swayed by such temptations.  I might have been tempted myself, though I have not yet done the deal, but I was very taken with a soft orange shrubby potentilla, which I feel could usefully go somewhere near the 'Hot Chocolate' roses and purple leaved Cotinus (bits of the Cotinus are dying.  I am rather peturbed by this).

I spent a long time with a customer who wanted an unusual evergreen, not too big, to give to her neighbours as a 50th anniversary present.  An added complication was her wish to spend what she judged an appropriate amount of money, around £15, so while she was very taken by a small leafed form of Pittosporum tenuifolium, with silvery leaves that contrasted beautifully with the black stems, it was slightly cheaper than her ideal.  We took a long time looking at other things, before she settled for the Pittosporum anyway.  The time spent with customers is only weakly correlated with how much they actually spend.  The one who spent over five hundred pounds chose all of her own plants, without any input from us at all.

Yesterday was the annual sponsored bicycle ride in aid of the Suffolk historic churches.  The owner had bicycled to seven different churches in three hours, after spending the morning on duty in the village church, and was pleased with her efforts.  Today we inherited most of a box of mixed biscuits for the staff room, left over from the refreshments for the participants.

After the close of business we all went to see Eric the rooster.  The owner said that Eric was not at all vicious, and she thought that when he ran at the gardener this was not with the plan of attacking him, but because he wanted a cuddle, and possibly to be saved from the peacock.  Poor Eric, the misunderstood rooster.

don't all rush at once

So that was Day One out of my three day stint at the plant centre.  It was very humid, and rather grey most of the time, though I couldn't grumble about the lack of sunshine given that I'd left my hat at home, and if it had been a bright, scorching day I wouldn't have liked it.  By quarter to eleven we'd only had about two customers, though it got busier later on.  After the last lousy winter, and given the miserable state of the economy, we could so much do with some decent weather, just a few weeks of limpid autumn sunshine to put people in the mood to beautify their gardens.

My job for today, and indeed tomorrow and Monday, was to revamp the display tables.  On Tuesday the owners are hosting a visit by fellow members of the HTA (Horticultural Trades Association) and they want the place to look its best.  This is an industry self-help scheme, in which the owners of local garden centres go and look at each other's premises, and give constructive feedback.  I suppose the idea is to raise standards across the industry, plant sellers of the Essex-Suffolk border unite against Jimmy's Farm, golf, the U3A, and all rival attractions for the spare time and spending power of the local population.  It is rather a sweet idea.  I don't think there was anything like it when I worked in the City.  Instead of tidying up specially for the visit we should really let the HTA group see us in our normal state, then their feedback would be more relevant, but the owners' pride is at stake.  Also, the manager is doing a lecture on bulbs on Wednesday and the tables might as well look nice for that.

There seemed to be something of a shortage of plant material with which to titivate the tables.  I'm sure that in previous years we've had a collection of Hibiscus in full bloom which were useful for displays, and we could do with more flowering grasses.  As I revisited potential sources of plants that I'd previously rejected as too shabby, in some sort of vain hope that they might have improved since the last time I looked at them, I was reminded of an episode from my first (psychology) degree.  I took the child development paper (which illustrated the limitations of purely academic instruction, since I was not personally acquainted with any small children or babies at all, and at the end of it if you'd handed me one I couldn't have told you its age to within 18 months.)  One famous experiment involved showing babies of different ages an object, then putting it behind a door while the infant watched, then secretly removing it.  The children's reaction to this unexplained disappearance was supposed to allow the experimenter to infer whether or not the child had yet developed the concept of objects continuing to exist even when out of the infant's sight.  I objected to the thesis of the experiment, on the grounds that when adults looked for their car keys in the same place they had looked twice already, we put this down to bad temper and didn't infer that the adults held incorrect beliefs about the spatial and temporal habits of car keys, and it seemed harsh to expect a six month old to display a more rational search pattern than a grownup.  (The tutor disagreed.  I don't think academic psychology and I were cut out for each other.)

Eric the rooster turned up OK last Monday evening after his altercation with the peacock. and was cock-a-doodling throughout the day.  My colleagues both asked me if Eric had attacked me yet, but when I said no, why, had he attacked anybody else, it seemed that he hadn't.  Eric was a giveaway rooster, one said darkly, and there was always a reason why roosters were given away.  He had given away roosters himself.  I thought one reason for needing to give away roosters was that you wanted several hens but only one cockerel, and in the normal way of things you'd probably get nearer half and half, hatching a clutch of eggs.  As my other co-worker dislikes Berberis because it is prickly, I assume that on the same basis he distrusts any large bird with spurs.

One of them told me that the true reason for the water tank to have run dry seemed to be nothing to do with the tank not filling, but rather that the owner had emptied it to fill up one of the ponds.  Apparently he did this again in the middle of the week, when the manager was there, and the manager discovered the tell-tale hose leading from the tank to the garden.  So much for blaming the weekend staff for not keeping an eye on the tank.

As this is supposed to be a daily record it is really rather late to talk about last Monday, but I forgot to mention that the gardeners trimmed the yew hedges, and that we bag up the clippings and they are collected for use in making Tamoxifen.  It's easy to assume that drugs nowadays are all sythesised in laboratories, and it's odd to think, as people take their dose of a cancer drug that could save their life, that the active ingredient started off in an Arts and Crafts garden in Suffolk, and one September day gardeners carefully gathered up their hedge trimmings.

feed the bees, £1.59 a bag

I've started feeding the bees.  To compensate for the fact that I've taken most of the surplus honey they made earlier in the year, they get a solution of granulated sugar, two pounds of sugar dissolved per pint of water.  As I bought the sugar I did notice that Tesco's stocks of granulated sugar were lower than normal.  Can it be that with the increased number of beekeepers we are now starting to buy sugar in quantities sufficient to denude supermarket shelves?  It was probably just coincidence.  Tesco are not always very good at that sort of thing, so they devote about 10cm shelf space to preserving sugar, enough to hold one row of bags and one row only, and every year are taken by surprise that marmalade making is a seasonal activity that happens in the first half of February, and fail to restock the shelf several times daily, as they need to for that brief period.  Nowadays I try to remember to stock up on preserving sugar any time I see it from about Christmas onwards, rather than wait until after I've bought the Seville oranges to try and track some down.  My purchase of ten large bags of sugar reduced the height of the pallet by one layer, so it's not impossible that several other Colchester beekeepers have done the same and made a visible dent in stock levels.  But probably it's just normal consumption, and Tesco have been a bit slow restocking.  Looking on the bright side, granulated sugar was on special offer.

I heat the sugar solution in a large stock pot until it is well and truly dissolved, but don't boil it.  I give it to the bees using a contact bucket feeder, which is (beekeepers will know this bit and might as well skip it) a plastic bucket with a close fitting lid, and a hole in the lid filled with very fine mesh metal gauze that the solution can leak through.  The bucket goes upside down on top of the board over the brood box (the crown board) which has a couple of strategic holes in it for this reason (among others).  I've already taken the supers off, so there is no risk of them being filled with 'honey' that is actually Tate and Lyle's finest, and to make space under the roof for the bucket I put an extra super with no frames in it.  The roof of the little nucleus hive has extra vertical space built in, to leave room for a feeder, and I have a miniature bucket that fits in there.  (Anything that is inserted into a beehive to give some extra headroom is called an eke, and I am hoping that the Systems Administrator will make me some ekes out of offcuts of decking, as it can be a nuisance having to empty the frames out of a super).

The bees are supposed to take the sugar solution down into the brood box, and store it as they would honey, to use through the winter.  The total amount they need to take is more than the contents of one bucket, so I was back today doing refills.  They took the first lot very quickly and before it could crystalize in the bucket, and I'll keep going with second helpings until they lose interest.

Listening to the bees foraging on the ivy flowers, I thought I'd better get on and remove the super that was still on the late-running colony, before they could put any ivy honey in there.  The last time I checked the bees the honey in the super still wasn't capped, and the bees were so busy I left them to work on it for a few more days.  Ivy is one of the last things to flower in quantity, and the bees love it, but I got a super of ivy honey at the end of one season, and it tasted completely disgusting.  There was nothing to be done with it but feed it back to the bees.  As the super today was full of bees I couldn't remove it at once, but put a clearer board under it (another crown board but this time with one way bee escapes fitted in the holes).  I took a view that as I didn't want to go through the frames in the hive, I could lift the super off, remove the queen excluder, whip the clearer board on and replace the super without smoking the bees.  I could, but they began to emerge from the hive very quickly without smoke.  It was a humid day, not at all the right weather to disturb bees more than you had to.  The colonies being fed were far quieter, but of course I wasn't taking their crown boards off.

I'm not at all convinced that the swarm is going to be large enough to make it through the winter, but I don't want to mess with the other bees, so I won't try and combine them, but will feed the swarm and leave them to take their chance.  It will be interesting to see how they do.  I saw a varroa mite on one of them during my previous inspection, so coated the tops of the frames liberally with icing sugar, the idea being that the bees get sugar on themselves and have to groom it off, in the process grooming off the mites.  I have some chemical treatment that I'll use on the others in due course, but reading the instructions the dose would be too high for such a small colony.  I noticed wasps around the colony entrance, so set up a wasp trap nearby while I was at it.

Being a small-scale hobby beekeeper, I make up my sugar solution as I go along.  People with more colonies make it in bulk.  My beekeeping tutor once managed to upset a container holding several gallons of solution, in his kitchen.  Not advisable.  Very sticky.

poppies with commitment issues

The success of my third attempt to establish the California tree poppy Romneya coulteri in the back garden still seems to be hanging in the balance.  There is a lusty specimen at the Chatto Gardens, in the dry garden just opposite the cafe, and I feel that it ought to be quite happy in the light soil where I'm trying to persuade it to grow, if it would only just give it a try.  A well-grown Romneya is a thing of beauty, with stems around chest height covered in grey leaves, and large, single, white, poppy-like flowers with golden stamens.  Once established it is supposed to run about, but the books all admit that it is notoriously difficult to establish.  Mine is not running, so much as cowering on the spot.

I was pleased a while back to discover that it had at least made it through the winter, or rather one stem had, since that was one stem more than I'd seen in the second season of either of my previous plants.  Then the single stem fell off, and I thought that after three failed attempts it might be time to call it a day.  But then yesterday I read in Christopher Lloyd's Garden Flowers that it is best treated as a herb, cutting everything within sight to ground level in early winter, so thought that maybe in that case it might survive losing its only stem in August.  Today, weeding the island bed as I replant it for the third time in as many years (third time lucky?) I found its little cluster of new shoots, next to where I had thoughtfully marked the spot with an iron plant support.  They don't exactly look as though they were bursting with life and enthusiasm, on the other hand they are not dead, yet.  I have been teasing the creeping sorrel out from around it, so I'll give it a top-dressing of mushroom compost and bonemeal and hope that something is happening underground, and that next year it will burst forth.  The great man is less measured in his praise than I am, describing the plant as a thrilling spectacle, carrying abundance of pure white poppies, but I am curbing my enthusiasm in case mine dies again like the others did.

Occasionally I have to remember to curb my enthusiasm for Great Dixter, at least as far as trying to emulate it too far goes, when Lloyd reminds me that the soil there is heavy clay, and I remember that I am mostly dealing with starved sand, and that Dixter has been cultivated as a garden and presumably dosed with regular additions of compost since Edwardian times, whereas our site was an orchard which was probably dosed with nothing except unholy amounts of Simazine.  Also, re-reading Garden Flowers I am forced to admit that at Dixter many areas of planting are changed several times a year, treating plants that I would use as perennials if I could even grow them at all as bedding plants, to be grown on to the point of flowering behind the scenes, installed in the borders to do their bit, and then moved or scrapped straight after flowering.

I have gone so far as to ignore the great master and plant a Phuopsis sylosa, which I saw and liked at Rosemoor, and Chistopher Lloyd dismisses on the basis that it smells of fox.  It doesn't smell that bad to me, but then I don't have a great sense of smell.  Phuopsis, in case you were wondering, is a herbaceous front of the border sort of thing, with thin green leaves and pink flowers.  I raised several from seed, but lost most of the young plants in the greenhouse last winter, so today's was the sole survivor.  We have a few left at work, so I might get a couple more.  Lloyd says that it soon spreads beyond its allotted area, which sounds what I need, a vigorous creeper to fight it out with the creeping sorrel.  Though talking of things that smell of fox, I was weeding around a box plant that was in flower, and that was truly disgusting.  The Dead Queen Anne scrapped (or at least caused to be scrapped,  I don't suppose she dug them up herself) all the box plants at Hampton Court because she disliked the smell.

back at the vet again

The black cat saw the vet today, for his final sign-off after his operation.  We were several minutes early, having allowed for traffic that might have been bad but wasn't, and the vet was running half an hour late, so we sat for some time in the waiting room, the cat wedged between us in his red wire basket, looking resigned.  Once in the consulting room, he obliged by marching around the floor to exhibit his gait, and we expressed our satisfaction with the outcome while the vet fretted that he had lost some muscle mass on that side and his knee still wasn't absolutely perfect.  As the Systems Administrator pointed out to console her, the S.A.'s knee was operated on several years ago at vast expense by a man at the Wellington Hospital, and that isn't absolutely perfect either.  The vet agreed that absolute perfection after the cat had totally detatched his cruciate ligament was never going to be achievable, and repeated that his outlook as regards arthritis were much better than if he'd simply had cage rest.  I thought his chances of ever speaking to us again were much better than if we'd gone down the cage route, and we thanked her and left with expressions of mutual satisfaction.

The cat has actually become noticeably friendlier since his accident.  This is slightly surprising, since I wouldn't have expected five visits to the vet in just over three months plus several weeks kept locked in the house to have improved his view of his human companions.  I can never quite believe it when in nineteenth century literature people's characters are suddenly improved by suffering.  Chuck Katy out of a swing and stick her in a wheelchair for a few years, that'll turn her from a noisy tomboy into a caring sensitive young lady with modest manners.  Drop a burning house on Mr Rochester's head and he'll discover his inner feminist.  However, the black cat, whose presence in the household has always been counted by whether either of us have seen him in the past two or three days rather than whether he was in for his tea, has become much fonder since his acccident and sticks around virtually all the time.

I was afraid I had scared him off this morning, just on the day we needed him to go to the vet, as he followed me into the garden while I was letting the chickens out of their house, and decided to make a mad dash past me at the exact moment that I threw away the water from the jug that had held their wet bread.  I hit him full on, and he ran away with the amount of panic and indignation you would expect from a cat whose owner has suddenly hurled a pint of starchy cold water over him.  I had to follow him empty-handed, apologising profusely, and coax him out from among the jerusalem artichokes.

how many major heritage attractions do you need?

The headline in the East Anglian Daily Times said Colchester: Iconic Jumbo water tower could be turned into flats and restaurant.  You might not know that Colchester has an iconic water tower.  It was built in 1883 in Italianate style out of red brick, and is tall and high up, as you would expect a water tower to be, so you can see it from round about.  I'm quite fond of it.  It is especially useful if you are on the train and have dozed off, or were not paying attention, so that when the brakes go on and you realise you are approaching a stop you can see at once that it is Colchester, and you aren't still at Chelmsford or Witham.  A friend who lived in the cosmopolitan centre that is East Finchley found the idea that one of Colchester's most significant buildings was a water tower faintly risible, but there you go.  We have to take our amusements as we find them in the provinces.

Jumbo, or the Balkerne Water Tower as it is more correctly known, is Grade II listed, and has been shuffled from one owner to another without being used for anything since it ceased to function as a water tower in 1984.  It is now rather sad, boarded off all round the bottom, with pigeons on it.  The current owner, who bought it for £330,000 back in 2000, wants to turn it into offices, flats and a restaurant.  The planners at Colchester Borough Council have said that this would be OK.

It turns out there is a Balkerne Tower Trust.  They don't actually own Jumbo, and as far as I know haven't been campaigning with popular local support to buy it, but they are opposed to the development plans of the man who does own it.  Their chairman says that 'Jumbo should be a major heritage attraction of which Colchester can be proud', and that Colchester already has enough offices, flats and restaurants around there, and that the scheme will lose money.

It is very kind and concerned of the Balkerne Tower Trust to seek to save a commercial developer from losing money in an ill-thought venture, but I'm not sure it is any of their business.  Still less am I convinced that Jumbo has a viable financial future as a major heritage attraction.  It is a brick tower with a water tank on the top.  What are people supposed to do?  Pose in front of it for their photos as if it were the leaning tower of Pisa, before climbing up the equivalent of about ten storeys to admire the view?  From the top, assuming the Balkerne Tower Trust are OK about cutting holes in the sides of the tank, or putting an extra platform over it, you ought to able to see, oh I don't know, the top of William and Griffin's roof, the inner ring road, the postwar main railway station and the big new housing estate stretching up towards the hospital.  I really can't see the gate money coming close to meeting the staffing costs and running expenses.

Colchester already possesses a beautiful fifteenth century grade II* listed timber framed house with a much-loved small garden called Tymperleys, which was given to the town by its previous owner, a local businessman, after he had funded its restoration.  Tymperleys is currently closed, its future uncertain, and its collection of clocks moved to another museum (Hollytrees), because the council can't afford to run it, and doesn't know what to do with it.  The new firstsite development is nearing completion, late, over budget and having attracted a storm of local controversy.  It is 'committed to delivering a world-class centre for the visual arts and a fantastic community facility for all our residents to enjoy, free of charge.'  The Mercury Theatre and the Arts Centre have both seen their funding cut, and their devotees (which includes us) are nervous that further cuts could make them unviable a few years hence.  Oh, and Colchester has a delightful free entry art gallery and garden in The Minories, and there is already a town museum.  With all of these buildings, which were actually designed as buildings for people to go into, not as a structure to hold up a big lump of water, providing ample space for static displays and performances and competing for public funds and private support, I'm not convinced that a Victorian water tower is going to cut the mustard as a major heritage attraction.

If Jumbo can be redeveloped commercially, and continue to sit in its familiar place on Colchester's skyline, then I say good luck to the developer, and to the businesses in the offices, and the people living in the flats, and the restaurant.  You never know, a nice civilised eaterie that offered a pre-theatre menu, in-at-six-out-by-ten-past seven, slick service, food not too salty so you don't get wildly thirsty midway through the first half, understated minimalist decor, no loud music or shouty young people, bang opposite the Mercury Theatre, might even persuade some of the grey pound that you see pouring out of their cars in the multi-storey twenty minutes before curtain-up to make an evening of it and go for a pre-performance supper first, instead of having a snack in the kitchen before going out like we do.

who has seen the wind

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I

But when half the pots in the plant centre fall down

The wind is passing by.

Or so might Christina Rossetti written, if she'd been working in a plant centre in Suffolk, instead of as a reclusive poet in Victorian Bloomsbury.  It was dreadfully windy, the sort of wind that creates mess and chaos, tipping over the plants (which then spill compost everywhere and crush each other) and driving every coherent thought out of my head.

The owners had a new rooster, who arrived yesterday.  This morning he apparently came into their kitchen while they were having breakfast, and later, when I went up to the house with a phone message I'd taken, he was in the office.  He was an amiable, dumpy bird with feathered feet, who looked to be an agreeable addition to the household.  By mid-afternoon he had disappeared, last seen running into the garden pursued by the peacock, so I hope they find him this evening.  Left out overnight he is likely to be fox food, which would be a shame.

My job for the day was to redo a row of display tables, which is generally an amusing task, though less so while it's blowing three quarters of a gale.  Some nice sedums had come in since the last time I was there, plus Callicarpa bodinieri showing a fine display of their purple berries, pale flowered astrantia that were looking very fresh and bandbox-clean, straight out of a glasshouse, and a selection of cultivars of Pittosporum tenuifolium, so I had some material to work with.  Even so I felt as though I were scrabbling around at times for suitable plants to use, but I think that was partly the stressful effects of the wind.

A longstanding customer rang to speak to a colleague, having heard on the grapevine that she'd not been well, and wanting to offer support and sympathy, which was really very nice of her.  One of the pleasures of working in a small firm where people tend to stay for a long time, is that we get to know some of the regular customers as people, not just as punters that we relieve of money in exchange for goods.

The manager was charging about compiling lists of big orders for the autumn, and I discovered with pleasure that we should be getting some more ginger-scented rosemary, and the extra-tender, extra-blue form of Teucrium, neither of which we've had since spring, and then they were only a few sad specimens held over from last season.  I tried the rosemary, and it died.

of puddings, self seeding, and the pickiness of chickens

I was worried a month ago that with the dry weather earlier in the year the apples weren't swelling properly, but they've plumped up since then, and are holding nicely on the trees.  There were a few lying on the ground, but only a few, not windfalls but hit-by-lawnmower-falls.  Since the blackberries are ripening in the lane, I thought I might as well make blackberry and apple crumble.  To be on the safe side I cook apple crumble in two stages, baking the filling until it's just soft, and then adding the topping.  Some apples explode to a fluff after ten minutes in the oven, and then it's a redundant precaution, but today's lot took nearly an hour to soften.  It is such a disappointment when crumble topping browns and the fruit underneath is still crunchy.  The end result can only be a sad compromise, of overcooked but just-edible brown crumbs over a partially raw base.  We don't normally eat puddings, as both of us are inclined to stoutness given half a chance, so we had the crumble for lunch.  Just the crumble.  We're having lamb curry for supper, so it will almost average out to a balanced diet over the course of the day, though I suppose the health police would say we should not eat crumble topping at all.  Sometimes I stir porridge oats in, for a bit of added texture, but this was the first crumble of autumn and I stuck to the purist version.

I picked some extra blackberries for the chickens, thinking they would like them, but they looked at my offering of fruit very suspiciously.  Sometimes I think they might be spoiled, what with their daily dose of Value sultanas.  I am sure chickens are supposed to be pleased when their owners go to the trouble of picking fresh blackberries for them.

The rain arrived mid-afternoon.  We'd been checking its progress on the rain radar through the morning, and it started bang on schedule.  In expectation of its arrival I'd spent another morning tidying the front garden, only taking a trowel and secateurs with me, instead of scattering the full range of tools across the back lawn or going as far as the meadow.  The Systems Administrator popped out to tell me when I had ten minutes left to go.  Rain ruled out painting the outside of the house, while it was not raining in Taunton, so the S.A. was stuck with the prospect of watching the finals of the 40:40 cricket all day, such hardship.

The yellow evening primroses I grew from seed collected on Dunwich beach, thinking that if they grew there they should grow in my front garden, have seeded themselves lavishly, and I think we're well on the way to having a naturalised colony.  The gravel garden in the centre of the turning circle is divided into two parts, by a breakwater made out of timber reclaimed from old sea defences, and the evening primroses started off on the south side, that is themed Beach.  They have seeded themselves there, but more seedlings seem to have come up on the other side of the barrier, where the theme is Italian Garden and I have a lot of small bulbs planted.  They particularly like the gaps between the paving.  The relaxed atmosphere of planting styles that incorporate self-seeding is largely illusory, since avoiding a monoculture of evening primrose, or Verbena bonariensis, or whatever it is, depends on a fair degree of vigilance and selection on the part of the gardener.  I should be able to move some of the smaller plants, and some of the others may have to go in the compost bin.  In the back garden new Verbena bonariensis are appearing from the ample seedbank to replace those lost last winter, as I hoped they would, and I've been potting up some young plants from places where I don't want them, like the middle of a path, to use elsewhere.  I did this last week just before the hot spell and they wilted pathetically, but I'm hoping that today's wet weather will give them time to recover.  Each one got a little scoop of Rootgrow in its pot to help restore its traumatised root system.  I haven't tried using it in pots before, but since the way it works is to link to the plant's own roots to form a larger water collecting system, it ought to help.

I think the sea campion is seeding itself about, but the pea plant that I thought was my one surviving sea pea turned out to be yet another everlasting pea, Lathyrus latifolius, which must have grown from a seed that fell down as the remains of a plant were being carted off to the bonfire.  The perennial everlasting pea is a useful plant, flowering over a long period and as tough as door-nails.  Its pink flowers are cheerful, though scentless, and after dying down to ground level in winter, it makes branches up to a couple of metres long, that will drape themselves over spring flowering shrubs and jazz them up for the late summer.  I like it, but have to admit that it does seed itself prodigously, and that the seedlings are hard to dig out unless you get them young.  I have a lot of it in the back garden, probably slightly more than I really want, and I don't want it in the front garden as well.  It's a shame about the sea pea, but it doesn't seem to have relished life in our front garden.  You win some, you lose some.

reflections while weeding

The recent mix of rain and sunshine has brought the weeds on prodigously, and I spent today weeding areas of the front garden that were planted up earlier in the year.  The Silene maritima and small pink evening primrose that I planted outside the blue garden hut have made nice bushy plants, once liberated from their little plastic pots (not before time) and set in the soil with a dusting of 6X.  Once I'd pulled the grass seedlings out from around them I could even see them.  The sea campion is a pretty thing, with larger, pinker flowers than the ones I had already.  There is a useful smattering of self-sown Galactites tomentosa, which has toothed edged, variegated leaves and mauve flowers and is much better sown direct than when we try to keep pots of it in the plant centre at work.  The beach themed planting scheme is coming along, but I'm going to have to weed out the annual poppies, which have been fun in years past, but will overwhelm the smaller perennials.

The turning circle has also grown a fine crop of annual weeds in an alarmingly short space of time, as well as a fresh sprouting of sheeps' sorrel.  Pulling those out gave me plenty of time to consider the performance of the shrubs I planted back in the spring.  Most have established themselves convincingly by now, throwing out strong new growth and taking up much more space than they did when freshly planted.  The experimental, large and slightly tender shrubby euphorbia is making new shoots from ground level, as is the lemon verbena.  However the ginger scented rosemary never looked happy at all, nor grew a single centimetre, and then went brown and died, and has already been consigned to the bonfire.  It was an old plant that had overwintered at the plant centre, and was not ideal, but was the only one we had, and we haven't had any more since.  I guess it was too potbound to grow away, despite regular watering.  The only other shrub not to thrive is an Albizia julibrissin 'Rosea' or Persian silk tree that I grew myself from seed.  I had two, so planted one in the ground, which has been watered faithfully all summer, and put the other out for the summer in a nice unglazed terracotta pot.  Neither is growing much at all, and I can't work out what's wrong with them.

There is a good splash of colour in the front garden from the pots of geraniums and other tender perennials, that are still flowering energetically.  I've been fairly diligent this year about feeding them with tomato fertiliser, and I think that's paid off.  The dahlias planted in the ground are pretty good, though there are some gaps after the winter.  The dark red forms are noticeably less persistent than the yellows and mid oranges.  The red one I planted into the dahlia bed out of a pot turns out to be completely the wrong shade of red for the company it's been asked to keep, bright cherry instead of deep dark red, and will have to be potted up again come the autumn.  An order with Halls of Heddon beckons for next spring, now I can see what spaces need filling.  In fact, I'd better make a rough calculation of how many plants are needed, and keep a note of it, as by next year I won't be able to remember.

The crab apples are starting to colour up, and the rose hips.  The Gaura lindheimeri are still flowering, and have been joined by various asters.  One of them is a rather nice blue, and I must look at my planting spreadsheet and try and work out which one it is.  Bouncing back after the winter is a gigantic form of red hot poker.  I grew these originally from seed, and they are nominally Kniphofia rooperi, but since red hot pokers are notoriously promiscuous I should probably just regard it as an unknown vigorous hybrid.  The plants are large, the tufts of leaves growing to well over half a metre tall, and carrying big, rather rounded pokers on stout stems.  Last winter reduced the leaves to mush, but the plants have come back strongly from the base.  They tolerate light, dry soil, root competition from the hedge, and partial shade, and seed themselves fairly generously.  Not one to introduce to a small garden full of tiny treasures, but just the thing for a large one.  Assuming you like orange, which I do.

And that is enough random jottings on early September flowers for one evening.  I'm writing this sitting out on the veranda, and it's getting rather dark to see what I'm typing.  My touch typing isn't bad, but I wouldn't say it was good either.

the day we went to Clacton

We went to Clacton today.  Twice.  Not to go to the beach, though the queues of traffic were building during our return trip.  I quite like beaches, but prefer them out of season, when there aren't many other people and might be some interesting bits of wood or other flotsam waiting to be picked up, or at least shells.  I have never seen the point of lying on a beach with a lot of other people, and the Systems Administrator flatly refuses to disrobe in public.

No, we went to Clacton because that is where the Skoda garage is, and we went to the garage because a few days ago the S.A.'s Skoda ceased to be capable of going into reverse gear.  As a firm believer in the utter reliability and superiority of Skodas (despite the caper that mine pulled back in the summer with the brake lights jamming on) I found this distressing.  The S.A. said hopefully that it would probably be covered by the dealers' warranty, and booked it in.  The woman who runs the service department, who always sounds as though she knows about cars, said that it was an unusual fault, and that it would either be very quick to fix or else require them to strip the gearbox.  To be on the safe side she would book workshop time for next Monday and Tuesday.

Planning a journey in a rural area in a car that cannot under any circumstances go backwards takes more thought than you'd think, until you'd thought about it.  The S.A. decreed that I should lead the way, and check that the public lane was clear of lettuce lorries, then block the entrance to the farm lane until the faulty Skoda had scuttled forward from the last place that was wide enough for two vehicles to pass.  I was to turn LEFT on to the public lane, to avoid us using the traffic lights with the dodgy sequencing that leaves cars trying to turn right across the main road stranded when the lights on the main road go back to green (I grumbled about this to the neighbours at the Bank Holiday drinks and was assured that it was a well-known local issue that had been reported.  Many times).

This plan worked well until we got to the main road, where I should have turned right if I wanted to go to Clacton, but remembered that I had to turn LEFT.  The S.A. internally debated whether to follow me, or just go to the garage and assume I'd turn up eventually, opted to keep me in sight, and we both did a quick loop through the yard of the local pet emporium (formerly a farm shop).  Then we went to the garage, and then we went to the Clacton branch of Tesco to spend some more of the enormous collection of pet food vouchers that we got in the last double-your-vouchers offer.  I presume that Tesco's marketing department hope we will be tempted to use the extra vouchers buying things we wouldn't otherwise get, but our philosophy has always been to think of something you have to buy anyway, that keeps for a long time, and buy lots of it.

Then we went home, and found a message on the answerphone saying that the car was ready, as it turned out to be a quick adjust-some-linkages problem, and not a strip-the-geabox-we'll-have-to-order-the-parts fault.  We went back to Clacton.  Then I thought I might as well go on to Tesco and fill up with petrol, and turned LEFT at the roundabout instead of right, and found myself at Morrisons instead of Tesco, which was no use because I had a Tesco 5p off petrol voucher.  Then I thought I might as well go home via the garden centre and buy the tree stakes I forgot on Tuesday, to try and make the whole expedition seem more worthwhile.  When I try to work out where my time goes, it is easy to forget how much time you spend in life just faffing about.

last chance to see: part 2

After the Whitechapel Gallery I went to Tate Britain, taking the District line from the handily located Aldgate East tube station and walking down from Westminster.  This works fine as long it's not raining (hard) and you enjoy a bit of a walk, and you get a nice view of the Houses of Parliament (and the tourists, and the rather depressing anti-terrorist barriers now ringing parliament).

The show I went to see at Tate Britain also finishes on 4th September, so you have even less time to see it.  However, acting as a spoiler for my own post I would say that you may not necessarily want to.  They are showing The Vorticists: Manifesto for a modern world.  Even after going to the exhibition I am not too sure what The Vorticists stood for, which you could say suggests that it was not a very well curated exhibition, though in fairness to the Tate, my eyesight in dim light is not what it was and I had forgotten my reading glasses and didn't bother to try and read all the little labels.  The cheerleader for Vorticism was Ezra Pound, who must be forgiven much because of his role in bringing Eliot's poetry to the world.  I think The Vorticists believed in the future, energy, virility, modernity and the power of the machine, though apparently they got very cross when people confused them with Futurists.  They brought out their magazine Blast, just before the Great War started, and then in 1915 brought out the second issue, but by then people had other things on their minds, and one of The Vorticists' brightest and most shining talents was killed in the trenches, and Blast folded.

I find most of The Vorticists' aesthetic ugly and rather tiresome.  Think drawings of piles of girders that have been accidentally dropped from a crane, and a muddy palette, and you are more or less there.  However, the Royal Academy included some sculptures by some of their members in a show it did a couple of years back, and there were a couple of those that I wanted to see again, and thought they would probably feature in the Tate exhibition.  They are by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who was killed in 1915, and they are very beautiful.  Both carved out of stone, neither very big.  One is of a girl singing.  She stands on chunky legs in a vaguely suggested dress, and I'm sure we are looking at the influence of African art on Western sculpture.  Her arms are behind her back, one twisted round to hold her long plait.  Her head is slightly tipped back and tilted to one side, her mouth open, her eyes mysterious.  It is piecingly sad, all the sorrow of Nina Simone and Amy Winehouse locked into a little lump of stone.  I should love to possess it.  The other sculpture is of a kneeling faun, that looks self-possessed, wary and strangely lively.

Apart from those there were a few prints I liked, some semi-abstract black and white little pictures of northern scenes, and an etching and a pastel drawing of marching troops.  I have Tate membership, so found it worth nipping in just to look at the two sculptures, but I wouldn't want to shell out £14 or make a special trip to London just to see that exhibition.  You get a booklet, but having read it I'm really none the wiser, and as the R.A. showed the more famous pieces in this exhibition quite recently I'm not entirely sure why the Tate bothered.  The lovely sculpture of the singing girl actually belongs to them, so in theory I ought to be able to go and see it any time, but I've never discovered where or whether it is on regular display.  I think the Tate should put its entire catalogue on-line, together with the current location of every piece:  room 17 Millbank, on loan to The National Trust at Montacute House, in a cupboard.  We could then vote for which ones we'd like taken out of the cupboards and put on display (and maybe what should take their place in the cupboard).

I had a ginger beer in the cafe at Tate Britain.  It is not so nice as the one at the Whitechapel, being in a cellar, noisy and rather hot.  Postcards cost more, at 65p, though I didn't buy one.

Then I yomped up to Somerset House to visit The Courtauld, and had a cup of tea and a flapjack.  Their cafe has an outside courtyard, which looked inviting, but it turned out that it was waitress service and they didn't have enough staff on duty, and I sat waiting for twenty minutes for the tea.  Fortunately I wasn't in a hurry, but while I was sitting there a pigeon landed on my head.

The Courtauld has an exhibition running until 18th September of Toulouse Lautrec and Jane Avril.  Lautrec was one of the first graphic artists I came to admire, and I have loved his posters since my early teens, so I was keen to catch that, and I was not disappointed.  Their exhibitions are only ever small, and almost always well done.  We got posters, paintings, preparatory sketches, lithographs, photographs of Jane Avril and her fellow dancers, all linked together with clear, useful text.  The system at The Courtauld is that you have to pay to go in at all (it has gone up to £6) and that gives you access to both the temporary exhibition and the permanent collection.

My mother took me to London to see the Courtauld collection when I was in my teens, and I have been visiting intermittently ever since.  It has moved since my first visit, and now occupies Somerset House, a fabulous eighteenth century building that would be worth a visit in its own right.  The permanent collection is based on the private art collection of textile magnate Samuel Courtauld, and has been added to since.  Samuel had a very good eye for a picture, and managed to pick up The Bar at the Folies Bergere, a couple of fabulous Van Gogh paintings, a nice collection of Cezanne, and two completely wonderful paintings by Gaugin, as well as a good handful of Gainsboroughs.  The beauty of seeing these in their permanent home rather than an artist-themed temporary exhibition is that The Courtauld is so much less crowded.  Gaugin at Tate Modern was a complete bunfight, whereas there were times yesterday afternoon when I had these two paintings virtually to myself, so much that I was able to sit down on the floor in front of them and just contemplate.

The gallery has rehung some of the permanent collection since the last time I was there, in a way that actually makes more sense.  There is now a room of Renaissance art, a room devoted to Rubens and the Baroque, another for eighteenth century art, and all of the Cezannes have been gathered together into a little room of their own instead of being dotted throughout the building.  There are also more seats than there used to be (though not in front of the Gaugin).  These themed rooms include some good paintings on loan.  The collection is too large to all be on display at once, and some Bloomsbury set paintings that I rather like have disappeared from show, but it's interesting to go there and find something new on successive visits.

Postcards at The Courtauld are even more expensive, at 70p, but overall it is a wonderful gallery, and considerably better value than The Vorticists.  If it isn't on your list of places to call in when visiting London then I would say add it (but maybe get tea in Pret a Manger).

last chance to see

Once again I have managed to leave it until the eleventh hour before going to see various exhibitions which I've wanted to visit since learning that they were going to be on.  I put this down to lack of organisation, plus being busy doing other stuff, plus having a cold which meant that for several weeks I didn't have the energy to drag myself as far as London.  The bad news is that any of you who make it to the end of the blog and think you'd like to see any of these exhibitions doesn't have very long to do it.

First off was the Whitechapel Gallery.  I only went there for the first time last year, to my shame, because it is a lovely gallery.  It is no more than a ten to fifteen minute walk from Liverpool Street Station, down Middlesex Street and up Whitechapel High Street (which is mostly being demolished at the moment so it is quite difficult to find a street name sign to reassure you that you have got the right road).  Or for those who don't fancy a quarter of an hour walk through the East End, there is an entrance to Aldgate East tube station right next door to the gallery.

Whitechapel Gallery is based in what was originally the Passmore Edwards library, converted in 1901 to a gallery 'to bring great art to the people of the East End of London'.  It's a fair bet that my grandfather would have known it, being brought up in Whitechapel and dedicated to self-improvement through education.  It occupies an Arts and Crafts building by Charles Harrison Townsend, with some later additions, and the whole thing adds up to a nice, light, airy network of exhibition spaces plus the obligatory cafe and bookshop.

Current exhibitions I wanted to see were, firstly, selections from the Government Art Collection, subtitled At Work, which finishes on 4 September.  Seven people who have all worked with art from the government collection in one capacity or another have picked some favourites, or at least pieces they thought the rest of us should see.  This is interesting on several levels.  It means we can look at paintings and artworks that are normally tucked away inside UK embassies around the world, or Number 10 Downing Street, or other places where you and I are unlikely to encounter them.  It is interesting to discover what the government has been spending taxpayers' money on.  And it is fascinating to see who chooses what.  You get a booklet with this exhibition, and the various curators say how the artworks provided a talking point at times of stress during difficult negotiations and eased international diplomacy on its way, but we'll have to take their word for that (I always find magazine adverts rather risible that promise that the solar powered musical frog fountain or whatever it is will 'provide a talking point'.  When I used to work in offices with artworks I found the main use of the art was to provide something else to think about during really boring meetings.  Anyway).

The Government has been collecting quite a wide range of stuff on our behalf.  Some you would expect, such as paintings of crowned heads of Europe through the centuries, but in the show there is also, for example, a Bridget Riley (chosen by the Chief of the Intelligence Service) and a Lowry (chosen by Samantha Cameron).  What, if anything, does it tell us about Nick Clegg that one of his choices is an enigmatic early 1970s acrylic of a thermos flask on a rug in an ambiguous empty landscape?  Amother of his choices is a photograph of Lucien Freud painting the Queen, which left me wondering why she has her handbag with her, when Freud is only painting her head?  It can't be that she needs it to keep her keys, purse and mobile phone.  Hankie, maybe, or habit.  Lord Boateng chose, among others, a lively Edward Burra drawing of people in a New York jazz club from the late 1920s, which I really liked.  The good news is that, if you like the idea of Government Art but don't have time to get to this selection, there will be further exhibitions over the next year.

Next up was a collection of black and white photographs of people and scenes around the East End, from an exhibition originally staged in 1972.  If you are interested in London, and people, this is a fascinating slice of recent history.  Again, it shuts on 4 September.  On until 16 September is a career retrospective of a German photographer called Thomas Struth.  I had never heard of him until this show came along, despite the fact that his career to date spans over thirty years.  The first thing that strikes you about his pictures is that they are very, very large.  Apparently they are printed directly on to perspex: I have no idea how difficult that is to do.  Once you get over the shock of them being so large, you realise they are interesting irrespective of scale (or at least I thought so).  Downstairs are landscapes, pictures of people looking at art, and gigantic or complex industrial objects.  Upstairs are family groups from many parts of the world, photographed in their homes.  Struth left it to them to decide where in their house or garden to be pictured, and how to arrange themselves, with the one proviso that they must look at the camera.  He was struck by the similarities in families from different continents and cultures.  That is interesting, as is the way that in large groups people indicate extra degrees of closeness by touching certain family members, and the fact that so many of them close their bodies off with folded arms or legs, even as they look at the camera.  Then there are really giant photos of lush vegetation from around the world.  Also large coloured cityscapes, and smaller black and white city shots from the early seventies, the latter with virtually no people in them.  It is all strange, and interesting, and sticks in your mind (or at least mine).

The Struth exhibition costs £8.50 to go in, and was not very busy when I was there.  The others are free and were more crowded, though not unpleasantly so.  There is a very nice cafe, only accessible via the Struth exhibition for some reason.  It has a mirror along one side with a quite good shaggy dog story etched on it about Stephen Speilberg and Stanley Kubrick, and serves good cake (lemon polenta today, chocolate muffin the last time I was there, yummy), and has natural light and attractive bent plywood chairs.  There is a very good bookshop, assuming you are in the market for art books, which I wasn't, but it is the sort of independent bookshop that deserves to exist.  Its postcards were the cheapest of the three galleries I visited (50p).

And the other two galleries will have to wait until tomorrow, because it's getting late and I'm tired and want something to eat.

shopping for books

I wasn't going to write again about shopping so soon.  I was going to write about how I have planted the Colchicum bulbs that arrived last week without chopping lumps out of any of the other bulbs which are planted there already, which is a minor triumph.  And how the Robinia hispida has flopped all over the lawn, and I forgot to buy any stakes when I was at the garden centre, after my trip to the dump (aka tip, aka household recycling centre), which has got a new member of staff who looks disconcertingly like Ronnie Barker (have you noticed how things are disconcerting, but concerted?).

Then I read a few pages of the Telegraph website while drinking a mug of tea and digesting my lunch, and found another wail about independent bookshop closures.  It is not a very well informed complaint, since the savings on Amazon are not a matter of saving 10p as the author says in her article, but of paying between 30 and 50% less.  And it's just silly to say that an independent bookshop is the last place where you can talk to strangers without resorting to dating websites.  I talk to lots of strangers every time I go to work (OK, that is at an independent retailer, albeit not a bookseller).  If they look as though they might appreciate it, I even recite bits of poetry to them.  Or if you want to talk to strangers you can join a club or society for something you're interested in.  I talked to several strangers at the wildlife fair last week.  One of the silliest reasons given for keeping post offices open (there are many good reasons) was that queueing in the post office was one of the only times in the week that some old people got to talk to someone.  If that is true, it is an urgent reason for making proper social provision for old people, not for forcing the Systems Administrator to go and queue in the post office to to insure the van, instead of taking the preferred option of buying a tax disc over the internet.

But the really ignorant bit of Ms. Caplan's article is when she says that Amazon can't recommend what you should read next, and for that you need a real person.  Sorry Nina, but Amazon's algorithms are incredibly powerful.  It tracks your purchasing history for ever, and it identifies what else other people with similar purchasing patterns bought, and it makes a very good job of it.  Sometimes it comes up with titles by authors I know and like, and sometimes by authors I don't know.  The great majority of the time, when I check those out in the review pages of the broadsheets or hear about them on R4, they review well, and when I get round to reading some of them I generally like them.  The Amazon readers' reviews are also very useful.  I don't necessarily accept their conclusions, but they give a strong pointer to what kind of book it is, and I can decide for myself if I think I'd like that sort of thing.

On the strength of my having bought a lot of Roger Deakin, Amazon told me that I might like Caught by the River, a series of essays about about rivers (link to Amazon here).  When my mum asked me what I would like for Christmas, I suggested that, and she kindly bought it for me.  Being a staunch supporter of her local independent bookshop (and reluctant to put her card details online), she ordered it from her friendly local bookshop.  When she collected it, she had a conversation with the friendly local bookshop owner, who said it looked interesting and she might order another copy for the bookshop.  Er, excuse me.  You are meant to be providing your customers with ideas of things they might like, not cribbing ideas for good new titles from the Great Satan Amazon.  Caught by the River is a lovely book, by the way, and I heartily recommend it.  I liked it so much I even ended up buying a print from the man who did some of the illustrations (over the internet, naturally enough).

I'm glad I've got that off my chest, and now I shall go and pull up some more weeds.

back to work

Blimey, three parties in 26 hours.  It's odd how we wait months for a party, and then three come along at once.  This morning it was back to work.  I don't generally mind working on Bank Holidays, now that I get double time, since if I hadn't been working we probably wouldn't have gone anywhere anyway, on the basis that it would be crowded.

It was a grey, cold, day, and difficult to get into the holiday mood.  I was wearing thermals under my cotton trousers, August or no August.  The manager, deceived by the weather forecast, wore shorts, and suffered all day from cold legs, but unfortunately hadn't brought any other trousers to change into.

My first job, after the watering, was to put away a half-full trolley of plants left over from Saturday.  I presume my colleagues yesterday left it where it was because they didn't know why it was there, whose it was, or whether the plants ought to be put back out for sale.  One of the last customers I served on Saturday, before leaving a quarter of an hour early, was an eyes bigger than tummy sort of chap, who had chosen more plants than he could afford to buy.  Also, some of the plants in his trolley were for his own use, and the others for a client.  At the till I had to unload the trolley, separate the contents between those for him and those for someone else, wait for him to rank each pile in order of desirability, and put each lot separately through the till up to the point where he decided he had hit his budget.  His client's limit was fifty quid, so several plants from that pile went into the discard heap.  His limit was a hundred, and he was incredulous that for that he only got seven plants.  I showed him his receipt to prove that I had really only put seven plants through, and pointed out that as a rough guide, a hundred divided by seven was around fifteen, and that as he had one shrub that was twenty-three pounds, and another that was nineteen, an average unit price of around fifteen was not impossible.  He apologised for appearing to doubt my till operating abilities, and went away grumbling, with some pretty rare shrubs, including something called Franklinia alatamaha which I think we have managed to get in stock once in the past five years.

Some customers complain that our plants are expensive.  Compared to, say, B&Q, some of the bedding is dear, but in general we don't charge above the local going rate for shrubs and herbaceous.  What the grumblers fail to appreciate is the choice we offer.  If you can get exactly what you want for £4.50 instead of £6.50 then that's great, but the chances of finding exactly what you want in a garden centre that only stocks a narrow range are low.  Is buying a day lily that you've chosen from twenty others because it was the one you liked the best equivalent to buying the same day lily because it was the only one they had?  I don't think so.  You certainly won't find Franklinia in B&Q, or any other garden centre within a hundred mile radius (OK, Beeches or Langthorns might have it, but I wouldn't bank on it).  It's not as if anybody working supplying ornamental plants is making a mint out of it.  One of our Dutch bulb suppliers has just gone under.

The owners were back from their holiday in Cornwall, and had had a nice time, including taking part in the Helston regatta, though it sounded as though they spent as much time capsizing as sailing.  Once they had checked what we'd been up to while they were away, the tills were pronounced to be spot on, which was gratifying.  They brought us a tube of Cornish ginger biscuits.  I ate one, and they'll all be gone by Wednesday night.

I found my Wellingtons in the tennis hut, and the manager gave me a small piece of a chrysanthemum which had broken off with a root already formed, to see if I wanted to try and strike it as a cutting, so I went home with more luggage than I arrived with.

surprise

I ought to be at work today, instead of which I have booked Sunday off because we have been invited to a surprise birthday party.  After the birthday party we’re supposed to be calling in at the neighbours’ Bank Holiday get together, and after that, well frankly, I shall need a rest.

I’m not too sure what to expect of the surprise party.  It was described as ‘just a few close friends round’ which could encompass practically anything, socially and sartorially.  I expect it will be very nice.  You could not easily hold a surprise party here, as the other person would be bound to notice the amount of effort it takes to get the house clean and tidy enough.  It is in a fairly typical state of muddle this morning, which goes as follows:

The hall.  On the hall table, besides the things that ought to be there, like a bread crock full of wild bird food, a ceramic jar with Value currants for the chickens, and the telephone, are the following objects:  My best trowel.  The S.A.’s secateurs. The S.A.’s gloves.  A yellow plastic torch that broke when it got dropped on the floor plus the bit that broke off it.  A clip from a picture frame that broke when it blew off the wall.  (There used to be a set of six framed black and white photos of traditional boats, cut out of a calendar, but that is down to four due to breakages.  I have got a new, posh, limited edition copy of an Edward Bawden print to replace them, which has been professionally framed, but is still propped against the wall on the floor in the bedroom.  Before the S.A. screws it to the wall I need to remove the old hooks and paint the hall).  The glass wall and door (1970s house) need cleaning, as does the floor.  Estimated time to clean the hall to surprise party standards:  two hours, or two days if I were to do the decorating.

The inner hall.  Besides the pottery (which needs washing) on the hall dresser (which needs dusting) are the following.  A plastic tub full of fence staples.  A plastic tube containing the shotgun pellets the vet took out of the cat.  A broken bronze watering can rose.  Assorted scarves and hats.  The S.A.’s subsidiary filing including a vehicle tax disk and some Tesco vouchers.  A plastic bag of jam jars my father gave me.  A box of Colchicum bulbs that arrived last Thursday.  A wooden bowl containing stones with holes in.  A pair of binoculars.  A piece of paper with instructions for Pilates exercises.  The floor needs washing and for a party we would tidy away the cats’ beds and the Wellington boots.  Estimated time to clean the inner hall to party standards: at least two hours including washing the china.

The study.  Maybe if it were just a small surprise party we could shut the study door, and direct all the visitors to the sitting room.  Last time, when we were doing a full buffet lunch for circa 50 people, we needed it as an overflow room for them to sit down to eat.  At the moment every horizontal surface that could have stuff on it (my desk, the top of the cupboards, the window sill, the niches at the ends of the bookcases) has got stuff on it, including the following:  My laptop.  My old and almost defunct laptop that I haven’t quite finished copying data off.  My old desktop, ditto, including keyboard and mouse.  Rechargeable batteries.  Battery chargers.  Gardening magazines.  Beekeeping magazines.  Assorted bills. Books.  A broken lampshade.  Chequebooks.  My Zen desk calendar.  The boxes from the previous three calendars with old pages stuffed in them for use as shopping lists and notes.  My camera.  Railway magazines.  The S.A.’s folding umbrella.  A pinecone.  A green ceramic frog.  A wooden bowl containing half-discharged batteries.  A padded envelope containing small change.  A crème fraiche pot containing interesting stones.  A jam jar containing long thin stones.  A solitaire set (needs dusting).  A filter that might have come out of the vacuum cleaner.  A wooden artist’s dummy.  A toy wooden duck that walks down a ramp when you push it.  A boxed set of 100 penguin postcards, partly used.  At floor level there is the following:  A pile of paper for recycling that has spread to approximately one metre square.  Several plastic storage boxes (empty).  The packaging the new telly came in, which I am not allowed to throw away yet in case the telly stops working.  Some nails that were in a pallet we burned in the stove, which I felt had sculptural possibilities, if only I knew how to weld.  A wire cat basket.  A plastic storage box containing empty water bottles that the S.A. thought might come in useful on the boat.  A shoebox containing interesting stones.  A cardboard box the grey tabby likes sleeping in.  A Band of Brothers DVD box set.  A paper shredder.  For full party mode we would need to rearrange the furniture as well as clear away the clutter and clean the room, so estimated time to bring up to party readiness:  at least half a day, probably more like a full one.

The kitchen.  That isn’t too bad, as we are both quite keen on not getting food poisoning.  The Aga needs a thorough clean and polish, and the floor could do with a quick wash, and I think it’s time I cleaned the fridge out.  In terms of clutter we have:  My gardening diary.  Three gardening magazines.  A beekeeping magazine.  Some catalogues including a couple I actually want to buy things from.  Bills.  The 2004 Good Beer Guide.  A black marker pen.  A fact sheet about stag beetles.  An empty ginger powder jar that is supposed to remind us to buy more ginger.  Some marketing gumph from Fidelity addressed to the S.A., who isn’t going to bother to open it.  Estimated time to clean the kitchen, if I were to do the fridge properly and including getting the drips of glue from the flypaper off the top of the vegetable peelings recycling bin:  at least half the morning.

The cloakroom.  This is fairly clean, just needs a quick wipe and vacuum.  When the electrician came to trace the wiring fault, the Laura Ashley remnant curtain that hangs in front of the ceiling level fuse box, and coiled  power take-off cable in case we were to run a generator (it was there when we moved in) got half ripped off the ceiling.  Estimated time to sort out the cloakroom:  about an hour, including re-tacking the curtain to the ceiling.  Longer if lumps of plaster fall out of the ceiling.

The sitting room.  This doesn’t contain too much clutter, as we retain a veneer of Modernist minimalism at that end of the house by dint of shoving all the bits and pieces into the study.  The S.A. vacuumed it very thoroughly the last time we had people round, including hanging over the banisters to try and clean up the grey fluff that had stuck to the wall in the stairwell, but it would need doing again.  And we would have to move the furniture round, which always uncovers new exciting bits of dust you couldn’t see before.  For a full party I would dust the tops of the radiators, and the mantelpiece, which I am critically too short to see so it doesn’t normally bother me.  Estimated time: a couple of hours should do it.  Maybe three.

So that comes to between two and three days to get the house ready, before you even started thinking about the food and drink.  Fortunately it is not going to happen, as the S.A. and I have promised each other that we will not put on surprise parties.  I did check before the S.A.’s fiftieth, in case the S.A. was secretly hoping for one, but the response was ‘Good god, no’, and we went to Norfolk for the day instead.

here's one I made before the programme

Another blog entry I wrote the day before.  I do try not to do that, but I’m at work today (tomorrow) and then going to a party.  Two of our friends are celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary, and as they believe that a proper party involves good grub that you sit down to eat, and the celebrations are due to be held in a gazebo in the garden, weather permitting, the party starts at 6.30pm and isn’t one you would want to amble in an hour and a half late for.

I’m afraid it will be another quiet day at work.  The weather has not been conducive to gardening, and even if it doesn’t actually rain tomorrow, I don’t suppose that lots of people have spent this last week getting their borders ready for planting.  I certainly haven’t.  The relative humidity outside today was 90%, which given that the temperature was just 17 degrees means that it would only take a 2 degree drop in temperature for fog to form.  (The 2 degrees is derived by subtracting 90 from 100 and calculating the resulting 10% of 17 degrees, which gives you 1.7 degrees, rounded to two for ease of expression.  I don’t understand it either, but that’s what the Systems Administrator says).  We have a new sensor for temperature and humidity for the weather station, which seems to be quite reliable, or at least consistent with other stations you can check on the net, and what our senses are telling us.  The old sensor gave some very peculiar readings, and on being brought into the house was found to be full of damp and earwigs.  It has worked better since we dried it off and removed the earwigs.

Last weekend the manager left a strict note for the staff to check the level in the water tank, as he did not want to come in again on Monday morning to an empty tank.  I should say it’s a 50:50 chance he has done it again.  It would be a good idea if he showed us how to switch the pump on in order to take water from the pond if needed, as nobody has ever told me, so if I discovered the tank were dangerously low the best I could do about it would be to connect the ditsy little hose from the kitchen tap, which would take all day to fill.  I’d better try and remember to ask on Monday.

I am hoping I will find my Wellingtons in the tennis hut, as they aren’t in the hall or my car.  I try to keep tabs of my stuff, and not leave things behind at work, but I seem to have slipped up.  Unless they are in the garage?  I’m rather reluctant to open the garage door to admit some light so that I can look for them given that it’s raining.  Plus it is 90% relative humidity and I don’t have the energy to start playing ‘ou sont les lunettes de papa?’ with my boots.

shopping from my sofa

The plastic fastener on the belt that came with the water repellent trousers I wear to work broke.  I'm not surprised.  It didn't look strong enough to cope with the vagaries of this world.  I had to have a belt otherwise the trousers fall down, what with the weight of my telephone and radio and secateurs all shoved into various pockets, and I didn't want to use my nice one long term.

I looked on Amazon.  You can buy practically everything on Amazon nowadays.  When the S.A. needed a new chainsaw, the cheapest place to get one of the desired brand and quality, after much shopping around, turned out to be Amazon.  It might have been different if I'd wanted an expensive belt, a lux, classic addition to my wardrobe that was going to add the finishing touch to my tidiest outfits, but I didn't.  I wanted a cheap leather belt, with a metal buckle that looked as though it had a sporting chance of lasting a few years, to be worn underneath a baggy uniform shirt.  It turned out that on Amazon I could narrow the search to 'jeans belts', and within ten minutes I'd found something that looked just the job.  Even with P&P it could be delivered to my door for under a tenner, and it arrived in about three days, before the next time I had to go to work.  It's true that when it came I found I had badly misunderstood the sizing on the website, so that the buckle came about a foot inside the nearest hole when wrapped around my waist, but the Systems Administrator has promised to drill out some new holes, and shorten the end.  If I'd been buying Mulberry's finest I'd have been crushed, there again, if I'd been buying an expensive belt I'd have gone to more trouble to understand the size chart.  It's fine.

This is partly why I think the High Street is in structural trouble, and our planners had better start getting used to the idea, and thinking laterally and creatively about allowing some changes of property use.  I could have gone into Colchester, and paid to park (about the same as the P&P on the belt), and spent an hour trailing around Debenhams and Marks and Spencer, and peering nervously into jeans shops I don't normally frequent, or investigating Primark, but I didn't have to.  I wanted a cheap, strong, functional leather belt and in ten minutes I'd found one.

At the wildlife fair on Wednesday I asked the Colchester Naturalists when the best time would be to remove some of the sedge that was taking over my pond, given it seemed rich in wildlife which I didn't want to disturb more than I had to.  They said September would be good, so I thought that this autumn I really would get on with it.  This meant that I needed a pair of thigh length waders, a purchase I've shied away from in the past.  Again I looked on Amazon.  Like I said, they sell everything nowadays.  Top of the list of thigh length waders came a pair for thirty quid, that had got unanimous five star reviews from five different customers.  Interestingly, none of them mentioned wanting the waders for actual fishing.  One was clearing out a pond, another a ditch, and a third needed them to do riverbed kick sampling for a B.Sc. dissertation.  Another said he was only going to wear them a very few times, so presumably pond clearance again.  That sounded like my sort of level in the marketplace, as I don't need super-warm neoprene lined ones to wear all day while standing in a trout stream.  They did come with steel insteps, to protect me if I stood on any sharp projections, which shouldn't be an issue in an artificial garden pond, but could come in useful.  The waders arrived today, smelling strongly of rubber.  They fit OK, and have straps with poppers to hold them to your belt, like chainsaw chaps, and altogether look as though they should do the job.

Now Colchester has a fishing tackle shop, next to the slightly upmarket department store at the top of the High Street, and they could probably have sold me some waders.  But they might only have had expensive waders, for people who wanted to spend the day standing in a salmon river, and I'd have had to make a special trip there, and contend with sales staff in what is to me an alien environment.  Much easier just to have a big, rubber smelling box arrive in a van.

It isn't going to get any better for the High Street.  I look at my parents' generation.  My father refuses to use the internet at all, and my mother is deeply suspicious about putting her credit card details on-line.  I have taken to internet shopping quite happily from the comfort of my sofa, while the youngsters will be buying things on the move on their phones.  Look at the house names in most English villages:  Forge Cottage, The Old Bakery, The Old Police House, Church House, School Cottage, The Old Post Office.  Look at the house fronts in the side streets of many small English towns, with their big front windows now covered by net curtains or blinds.  Those were shops, forty or fifty years ago.  And yet the villages and small towns are nice places to live (apart from the inconvenience of no longer having the shop-cum-post office that you spent about a fiver a week in tops when it was still open).  The old business premises aren't derelict eyesores, they're just used for something different.  Planners and councillors take note.

bang bang

The army were firing some heavy stuff this morning.  That'll have been the ranges at Shoeburyness, causing the deep, reverberative thumps that make the house shake.  They have test ranges down there, at the tip of the peninsular beyond Rayleigh, Rochford and Southend.  It is the UK's largest firing range, used for testing and evaluating new weapons, and for training bomb disposal experts.  At low tide 22km of soft sand are exposed, allowing the MoD to conduct firing well away from land, and then collect the spent shells.  It is the only such site in Europe.  You can pick up odd snippets about it here and there in the media and on the web, but it is a strange and secretive place.  In 2002 government scientist Terry Jupp died there, and the inquest on his death finally opened in 2010.  People do live on Shoeburyness, and there are two villages and even a pub, which we once visited as part of an Old Gaffers sailing rally, but the MoD had been primed to expect us.  I don't think it is a place you just wander into.

Closer to home are the army ranges at Fingringhoe.  They were having a little blast mid morning, but nothing sustained.  We can tell when they have a big exercise on, as the crackle of automatic fire continues all day.  By a strange coincidence I grew up within earshot of the marine training barracks at Lympstone to the regular sound of machine gun fire, so I don't mind it.  In the garden, that is.  If I were in the middle of London I'd be as terrified as everybody else.

The gunfire yesterday got closer still, as the farm shoot were out for pigeons along the edge of the field bordering our wood.  On hearing them go into the wood, the Systems Administrator did nip in there, just to check who it was, though I presume on the strong assumption it was the farm shoot, otherwise you wouldn't be so keen to confront somebody with a twelve-bore on your property.  They had come in to pick up a pigeon that had dropped our side of the boundary.  The first time we met them, they were shooting in the wood and were mortified to discover that it was not part of the shoot.  We reached an agreement that pigeons were fine, but strictly nothing at ground level, given we go in there and so do the cats.  The S.A. took the opportunity to mention the pellets found in the cat, plus the pile of 410 cartridges someone had left at the far end of the wood.  I went down to offer moral support, hearing voices, and asked if the S.A. had asked about the cat.  The farm shoot were adamant that they would not have shot the cat, and that they didn't use a 410 and in any case always tried to pick up their cartridges.  We parted on terms of amiable courtesy, declining the offer of a pigeon, they went back to the field. and the slaughter of pigeons recommenced.  It is an odd thing, to be talking to somebody holding a shotgun (albeit broken across his arm) and his friend holding a dead pigeon, in a space you regard as an extension of your garden, but context is all.  We often see them about the lanes, so I am sure they have the farmer's full authorisation and blessing, and it is good that they know about the 410 cartridges.  We are not part of the country set, just transplanted townies who happened to want a large rural garden, and the best way to keep cowboys, poachers and dodgy shooters off our land must be to delegate the task to the authorised local shoot.

There have been proposals over the years to build a new airport for London on the sands of Foulness.  Boris is still keen on the idea.  Apart from the fact that the MoD might not be happy to lose its testing ground, which it has been using for 150 years, I'd be worried about how much and what unexploded stuff is still out there.

all the fun of the wildlife fair

The Beth Chatto Gardens held a wildlife fair today.  I gather it was the first time they'd done one, and nobody knew exactly what to expect.  I can guess why they were doing it: because late August is a dead time for plant sales, and anything is to be welcomed that encourages the car park to fill up with people who will buy entry tickets and might buy at least some plants, and in the case of the Chatto Gardens refreshments (their cafe is very nice).  The beekeepers had a stand, so I said I'd go and help on that for part of the day, as I thought it would probably be entertaining and the other stands sounded interesting (plus I am a helpful person keen to Do My Bit for my Association).

The Chatto Gardens were very good to us, as helpers got free admission to the fair and gardens, and we were allowed as many volunteers as we needed, and free tea and coffee from the cafe, and borrowed bee-friendly plants from the sales area as part of our display.  Our stand wasn't as elaborate as the one we have for the Tendring Show, but we had our teaching beehive, and some basic tools, and posters, and gave out samples of cakes made with honey (recipe booklet 50p) and did candle rolling for the children (£1 a go).  Luckily I did not have to supervise any children making their own candles, as I've never done one myself, but I watched my fellow beekeepers carefully while they did it.  The candles come out tapered, and if you weren't concentrating it would be very easy to finish up with the wick protruding from the wrong end.  It was a grey and rather chilly day, and the wax foundation wasn't as flexible as it would have been given warmer weather, so I was doubly glad to escape.  Instead I talked to prospective new beekeepers about what was involved and how to progress things if they wanted to.

On the other stands, the Colchester Naturalists had got trays of pond life, a case of deceased stag beetles, and a live stag beetle grub, so I went and learnt more about how to identify stag beetle larvae, and the best time to clear out a pond (September).  The Essex and Suffolk Dormouse stand had hazel nut shells that had been nibbled by doormice versus other sorts of mice, and I think I finally began to grasp the difference in the teeth marks.  Apparently there are doormice in the Chatto Gardens, indeed they had a photograph of Mrs Chatto herself holding two, and round here is something of a doormouse hot spot, so the idea that they might be in our wood is not so ludicrous as I thought it was.  The doormouse expert offered to check nutshells for me to see what had eaten them, if I wanted to send him samples, and it turned out I knew his parents because they are beekeepers.  It's a small world.

I introduced myself to the people on the Woodland Trust stand, and got an update on anything I ought to mention in my talks, though I think I knew most of it.  While I was there I did check out the answers to a couple of questions that have been bothering me, even if none of my audiences have asked them yet.  The most pressing was, given the need for the UK and the world to increase agricultural production, and the value of some other non-farmland habitats such as heathland, what sort of land does the WT want to plant over with trees?  The answer is grade 3 agricultural.  I looked at the Tendring Tree Wardens stand and discovered that another beekeeper I know is one of my local tree wardens.  I was speaking to his mother yesterday about doing a Woodland Trust talk next year (very small world indeed).

There was a substantial element of people with an interest in nature conservation networking with each other.  The RSPB officer in charge of their new wildlife garden at Flatford Mill wanted advice on keeping bees in the garden at Flatford.  After discussing the matter we tended towards the verdict that it was a good idea to have bees on site, but not beehives in the area open to the public, especially since so many visitors bring their dogs.  Bees don't like dogs (or horses, though most people don't bring those).  In theory having nice bees in a garden open to the public should not be a problem at all, but the trouble is that the RSPB would potentially only discover that their hive had developed inappropriate guarding behaviour and become nasty after a visitor (or their dog) had got stung.

The carpark was pretty full by the time I left at about half past one.  I'll be interested in any feedback I get from our secretary about whether the Chatto Gardens found it worthwhile, but I enjoyed myself.

rain and incipient wardrobe failure

It rained this morning, slow, steady, persistent rain, that will do the garden some good (7mm altogether) but left us stuck in the house.  The Systems Administrator spent a couple of hours trying to diagnose the problem with our broadband, which is apparently running at one fifth of its normal speed.  There was no Eureka moment so I think the Mystery of the Missing Broadband remains unsolved.

I went and did some of my ironing, since rather a lot of my clothes were lying in a rumpled pile on the spare bed.  As I ironed I was forced to confront the unhappy truth that I might need to buy some new ones.  We don't go to many evening dos or other events requiring special glamorous outfits, so most of my clothes start life as quite nice daywear, and over the next ten to twenty years descend through a hierarchy, from being kept for best to being worn for gardening.  Best Clothes occassions are generally those outside the house, visits to other people's houses, holidays, or days out with friends.  A key feature is that I probably won't spend at least half the time with a cat sitting on me, bestowing stray hairs and pulling threads.  After a few years of ranking as Best, clothes are allowed to be worn for tidy occassions at home, such as when we have guests, where a degree of sartorial effort is appropriate but the clothes will get the cat treatment.  They are now Everyday Clothes.  After a few more years the clothes are deemed too grotty to be worn to receive visitors, but will still do for wear at home, maybe not on Saturday night when the Systems Administrator has done a full roast and we are eating at the table with candles, but fine for watching the gardening programme with pizza.  They are now Shabby Clothes, and suitable for long walks likely to involve mud.  Finally they become Gardening Clothes, which is a tradition with an honourable precedent.  Sir Roy Strong claims never to buy clothes specifically for gardening, and to just wear his old ones, and as he has a much more adventurous sense of fashion than I ever did, I believe this has involved some astonishing appearances.

Unfortunately several things in the ironing pile have reached the point where they really don't count as Everyday anymore.  A couple of linen shirts have faded beyond the point of chic, one with an additional bleached patch in the middle of the front where I managed to get a drop of fountain pen ink on it.  The ink scrubbed out, but so did most of the colour.  A third shirt tore through at the elbow the last time I wore it.  I managed to patch that quite neatly using an old handkerchief that was a remarkably good colour match (the boss at work just goes for the elbows out look, but I don't think I'm sufficiently upper class to carry that off).  A pair of moleskin trousers are getting dangerously close to wearing through in an embarassing place.  As you have gathered, I don't do throwaway fashion, or at least I do, but only in the sense that things that have dropped to pieces get thrown away.  The local charity shops don't see much from my wardrobe.

Originally most of them were quite good quality.  I got briefly excited when Tesco began to offer T shirts for under a fiver, but they went saggy and faded to remarkably nasty colours terribly quickly, while pima cotton shirts I bought twenty years ago are still doing fine service, albeit that nowadays their role is generally to be layered under something else.  I was about to say that good quality fabrics wear better as well as feeling nicer and hanging better, then remembered my occassional brushes with cashmere, and had to revise that statement.  But you can't go wrong with good quality cotton.