The sliding door of the chicken house was frozen into its runners, and I had to give it a brisk kick to free it. That's the trouble with weather that is first damp, then freezing. The chickens weren't coming out, though. They didn't even get down from their perch. With two days to go to the shortest day, 7.40am is earlier than a self-respecting chicken is willing to get up.
Trade at the plant centre got off to a very quiet start. I brought the Brunnera and Aster into the shop to start defrosting so that I'd be able to pick off the dead leaves and dibble out any weeds, and fiddled around with inconsequential jobs until they were slightly thawed. After two days of standing working at a table that was a good 15cm too low, my back was beginning to grumble, and it was a relief each time the phone rang. At least trotting across the plant centre to see if we still had a tree that somebody had seen, liked, not bought and now wanted to buy was something to do.
Later on we had some people out Christmas shopping, but very few seemed to be buying plants for their own gardens. It probably isn't at the top of most people's lists, in the week before Christmas. I cleaned up Digitalis and Bergenia, and the hours dragged by rather slowly.
The nicest things in the shop are the locally made, hand-turned wooden fruit. The wood turner uses yew out of the gardens, and the finished articles show no trace of marks from the lathe, and are polished to a beautiful soft shine. Yew is a lovely wood, a mixture of strong yellow, reddish pink and cream, which I think is partly achieved by using pieces that have a combination of heart and sap wood. We ought to do more high quality, locally made stuff like that. We are going to be more expensive than other garden centres for bog standard products, so we need to add value in customer's eyes by sourcing high quality, unusual things that they can't get elsewhere. I suggested to the owner that we ought to sell pure beeswax candles and was rather surprised when she said yes, she'd thought that, did I know anybody who made them? I do, actually.
The owner has got a new and (to my eyes) terrifyingly large horsebox, or at least 'new' in the sense of having come recently into her possession. I think it is quite an old and well-travelled horsebox that has done sterling service for various horsey families around the Suffolk border. The gardener was required to take her out for a driving lesson after his mid-morning coffee break. He said it was really quite easy to drive, as long as you remembered that there was a lot of it out the back. It has various unusual modifications, such an isolating switch on the battery. I suggested that there must be a slow power leak that would otherwise run the battery down, but what do I know? Like our truck, it sounds unlikely to be stolen.
And that really was it. After the morning frost thawed it began to drizzle, and then rained all afternoon. Strive as I do to extract interest and entertainment from every working day, today yielded thin pickings. I'm on holiday now until New Year's Eve, as we are shut next Monday. I can't imagine there'll be too many customers on New Year's Eve, but the manager has promised to leave me a list of things to be getting on with.
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