Things are starting to get busier at the plant centre. People are beginning to think about replacing the things in their gardens that have died over the winter, and favourite questions are coming up like ideas for quick growing evergreens to screen views to/from the neighbours' windows (not as easy as you'd think). There was a spectacularly scorched piece of sweet bay (yes, it was almost certainly due to cold, no, I wouldn't cut it back quite yet in case we have another cold spell. It's only the first half of February). A new one, which I didn't know the answer to, was the identity of some wriggly grubs in a jam jar that a chap had found in his homemade compost. He wanted to know, not unreasonably, if he could use the compost or if they would eat living as well as dead plant material. I offered to show them to the manager on Monday, which he was very happy about, except that he wanted his jam jar back, and I had to find something else to put them in (an empty milk bottle but I'm sure the dairy company will wash it thoroughly). It would have been an even better day if we hadn't realised, at 5.00pm when it was time to go home, that the paraffin heater needed filling. Jerome K Jerome had the measure of paraffin when he said that it started at one end of the boat, and moved down the boat until everything smelt of paraffin. The same is true when you get it on your trousers.
There are some nice hellebores about. 'Walberton's Rosemary' is a recent introduction with largish single pink flowers held upright so that you can look into their faces. I bought one last year, which was the first year we'd stocked it, and am interested to see if it is long-lived with me. The H. orientalis forms seem very perennial here, but some of the glamorous recent hybrids have not lasted so well.
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