The boss was on telly last night, talking about autumn colour. We've largely given up watching Gardeners' World nowadays in favour of the meatier fare of The Sopranos box set, but we made an exception yesterday evening. I thought he did very well. We'd stocked up on deciduous Euonymus, hoping for a rush.
We did get more callers for those than usual, plus a small crop of disappointed people who had come to look at the garden without checking the website or ringing us first. The website does say that the garden is open from 1 March to 30 September, admittedly not blazed in huge letters across the top of the home page Don't Bother Coming, The Garden Is Shut For The Winter, but quite clearly in the column marked Opening Hours on the Garden and Arboretum page. The boss is clear that the garden really is shut, since it is incredibly slippery. The sound recordist fell over making the feature for the BBC, and since someone slipped a couple of years ago, broke her ankle and sued us the owners are very keen not to have any more accidents. A couple who had driven from Brentwood were aggrieved, but while sympathetic I stood firm. It's November, for goodness sake, and if planning to drive any distance to visit a garden the sensible thing to do is ring first, and check whether it is open.
I was irritated to see that somebody had moved all the Heuchera that I spent half of last Monday morning gathering up and putting them under cover, as instructed by the manager, and put them back dotted around the display tables. The culprits turned out to be my co-workers for today, who had wanted the table to display some Daphne, and rearranged it in the past couple of days, while the manager took some holiday for half term. They said they wondered why all the Heuchera had been moved. I thought they had not wondered enough, given that as it happened while the manager was there it was probably at his instigation, and he presumably had his reasons.
Understanding that other people normally do things for a reason, at least when operating within their own field of expertise, is one of the hardest things for many humans to grasp. My favourite example comes from Thor Heyerdahl's account of his first Ra expedition. In 1969 Heyerdahl and his companions set out to cross the Atlantic from Morocco to the Americas on a reed boat, copied from ancient Egyptian records. Ropes ran from the upswept prow and stern to the centre of the boat. The crew found these rather in the way, and since the curved ends of the boat showed no signs of straightening out, they removed them. Half way across the Atlantic they discovered what the ropes had been for. They were not to stop the bow and stern from uncoiling, but to hold the middle of Ra up, and as the papyrus absorbed water the central portion began to sag and sink. The voyage had to be abandoned before they reached landfall.
The girl running the cafe today swept up and left at half past two. We had quite a few customers after lunch, as we tend to on weekend afternoons when it's not raining, and some of them wanted tea, coffee and cake as well as plants. My colleagues said that this was fine, they could make tea. Given we're open until dusk and advertise the fact that we have a cafe, we ought to be offering tea at least until half past three, but I don't think plant centre staff should be doing it. The cafe is now a separate business. They shouldn't be happy with us in their kitchen any more than I'm happy with them operating our till. I foresee tears.
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