heat

It was very hot in the plant centre.  We watered as best we could, but by the afternoon plants were visibly flagging.  They seem to dry out faster than my own pots at home, which is perhaps the downside of having a sheltered walled garden surrounded by trees and with its own microclimate. Our garden is draughtier, and while I've suffered winter losses of things growing in the ground that have survived in the shelter of the walled garden, we are cooler in summer.

I went on with the end tables, mentally designating each as moist or dry, and sunny or partially shaded, and mixing plants accordingly.  I attempted to stick to a clear planting style or mood for each one as well.  Garden plants are not merely organisms with cultivation requirements, that suppl a particular colour or growth habit.  They have cultural associations as well, be it cottage garden, prairie planting, playing-it-safe good taste, or slightly naff, and I tried to keep to a single theme for each table.  The manager did not tell me to do the tables, or even comment whether the tables looked nice, but neither did he tell me to stop.

I took a peculiar phone call from somebody who wanted to check our address because it wasn't working in her Satnav.  The address I gave her tallied with the one she was already trying to use, but she seemed to want me to give her another address, a better one that worked.  I thought it sounded as though she needed a better Satnav, but offered her the names of a couple of roads just round the corner from us, in case the machine could recognise either of those.  She didn't seem to think this was any help.

We had two coach parties, one in the morning and the second at lunchtime.  The first group were German.  One person wanted advice on whether Berkheya purpurea would over-winter in the ground in her garden, which stumped me slightly since I had no idea how cold or long her winters were.  I told her the winter conditions that my Berkheya had survived, and left her to draw her own conclusions.  They must have been favourable, or she might have been feeling lucky, but she bought one.  They are delightful grey leaved, prickly perennials from South Africa, with tall spikes of fat mauve daisy type flowers at this time of year, and given very sharp drainage and full sun they come through even bad winters in this part of the world.  The dormant buds are underground, so that the plant disappears entirely during the winter months.

The two coach parties kept the tea room busy, and it was just as well that we had two tea room girls in.  The manager was expecting a good sum on the tea room till when he tilled up at the end of the day, but it was a blow to discover that the grand total was over six thousand pounds. Something had obviously gone badly wrong, and the till reconciliation was going to be a nightmare.

I remembered to drive home via the village, to buy more cat food, and the makings of supper in case the Systems Administrator was feeling better.  When I got home I saw a chicken standing in front of the hen house, which meant that the SA must have got up.  It turned out that the SA had tottered down to the village at lunchtime, partly to buy more aspirin, and that we had each bought identical 500 gramme packets of minced beef as well as cat food.  The SA stocked up with seven tins, which would explain why by the time I arrived there were only two left on the shelf.  One of the packets of mince is now in the freezer.  I had probably better freeze the sausages as well, in case the SA isn't up to them before they go off.