summer lull

I gather that the dog at work ate something very bad last week, and made herself extremely sick, since when she trotted into the office this morning people commented on how she was looking better.  The boss also had a narrow escape, given that he was mowing around the beehives and knocked one over.  The bees belong to an Essex beekeeper who keeps them on a commercial scale in multiple locations, and is the judge at our local honey show.  He was over pretty quickly, and his bee suit disappeared under a great cloud of bees as he put the hive back together.  The boss hung around to watch, until Percy warned him not to stand too close, and bees started bouncing off his head.  I explained that when bees start flying into your head that is their idea of a tactful warning, and their next move will be to sting you.  The boss remained unstung, but it sounded to me like a close run thing.

Then it was rather quiet.  I thought today was supposed to be warmer, or at least dry and less windy, but it rained half the time, and was so cold I ended up wearing my fleece hat.  I was actually relieved it wasn't sunny, since I'd accidentally left my Tilley hat on the hall table at home.  While at an intellectual level I'm not that worried about a bit of sun exposure or wrinkles, at a physical level my body has decided for me that my face has had enough sun exposure for one lifetime, and nowadays strong sunlight makes it hurt.

The only thing the manager bought from the van that visits on Mondays was some grasses, which he'd ordered in advance, and as a sign that we really are approaching the slack period of summer, the van won't be back again until the autumn.  We are still getting some deliveries, increasingly of the impulse purchase sort of thing, such as large foxglove plants on the verge of flowering, and a consignment of clematis are due mid-week.  We have sold a lot of clematis.

I noticed while watering that the two trays of white marguerites bought to order a good month ago are still there on the reserve bed.  The manager had said to me that he thought he would stop ordering in bedding, as it was getting a bit late for it, and that same morning a customer asked me for white marguerites for the urns on his terrace.  He asked in a way that was slightly unnecessarily aggressive and alpha male for a trip to a garden centre, with an air of entitlement that made me distrust him, so I told him what the manager had told me.  He appealed to upper-middle class solidarity by asking the owner for marguerites, and she told the manager to order some in for him.  Four or five weeks later they are still sitting there, uncollected, and increasingly dishevelled as they need deadheading, and stunted because they should have been moved to larger pots by now.  We don't take deposits, unlike my blacksmith who very prudently asked for a deposit on my iron bean tendril, since it was a special.  Other people might not want a rusted iron tendril, and they probably don't want a load of by now pot-bound marguerites in late June.

I answered the phone to somebody enquiring about dark red climbing roses without a hint of orange in them, and after a while said he recognised my voice, and I had given his dog some water.  I confessed to remembering the dog, adding that I generally remembered dogs, and conversations about soil.  I do vaguely remember him, but only to the extent that, apart from not having his own dog bowl, he had messy hair.

When I got home the Systems Administrator was sitting out with the chickens, looking chilly, and the chickens were staring through the netting that the SA put up to stop them eating the dahlias, looking baleful.