even busier

It was a good day for bird spotting.  Driving to work I saw a pair of goldfinches flit into a hedge as I passed, the yellow bars on their wings and their red heads shining in sunlight that was already bright by 8 am.  In the early afternoon I looked up, prompted by customers who were doing the same, and saw three buzzards floating languidly high overhead.  They flapped their wings infrequently, gliding for long periods, and made strange high calls, a sort of descending mew.  Somewhere in the garden the peacock thought spring had arrived, and screeched periodically through the day.

My colleague caught up with the backlog of mail order, packaging plants up into strange improvised dalek-shaped parcels.  I took my branded box from Ashwood Nurseries in, which was re-used for a consignment of shrubs.  It would be rather smart, not to say time-saving, to have our own boxes in a variety of sizes, with our name and logo on the side, instead of fabricating parcels from multiple boxes and trays taped together, and topped off with old compost bags turned inside out.

We have got new flexible plastic covers for the tills.  The difference is remarkable.  The old ones were practically opaque through age and use, so that it was almost impossible to read the keys.  The replacements are crystal clear in comparison.  The keyboard has got to be covered with something to keep dirt and damp out of it, otherwise the tills would fill up with compost in practically no time.  I thought the new cover felt rather stiff, but presumed it would bed down with use, then the owner who had been puzzling why they had sent us only one cover discovered that it was in fact two, stuck together.  They seem extremely expensive, costing £20 a time for what is just moulded flexible plastic, but I suppose they have to withstand movement and UV without going brittle.  When I bought a boot liner for my Skoda six years ago I couldn't understand how a plastic tray could cost so much, but as it has survived this long without splitting it must genuinely be made out of superior plastic.

The dangers of bringing plant growth on to appeal to customers desperate for an early shot of spring colour were demonstrated by an entire table of Anemone blanda, which had got badly frosted.  They arrived a few days ago as charming looking pots of blue flowers and dainty little leaves, a critical two or three weeks ahead of the ones growing in my garden, and lo, a sharp cold night caused the top growth to shrivel.  The manager's list of tasks for the weekend instructed us to remove the damaged leaves, and put any pots that looked too bad away out of the sales area to recover.  I soon discovered that on most of the plants virtually all of the leaves and flower buds came away from the pot with the gentlest pull, the stems resembling beansprouts that had been left for too long in the fridge.  The manager was hopeful that there were new leaves coming up, but many of those turned out to be damaged as well.  It will be interesting, in a rather depressing way, to see if they have sufficient reserves to make new foliage, or if they run out of oomph.

Having commented to the owner that yesterday we hadn't had many high spending customers, even though the day's total takings were respectable, today the high rollers were in.  One bought four large box balls, three olives and a big pot, and asked without much conviction whether as he was spending a lot he could have a discount.  Sorry, that's something people have to negotiate with the owner (the answer is almost always No).  Another couple bought six birch trees, and trolleys full of hellebores add up to three figure totals.  It was reassuring to be busy.  When it is very quiet we can't tell if that is just the time of year and the weather, or if it means that everybody has fallen out of love with gardening or stopped spending money on anything except the basics.

crocus

I planted more crocus bulbs in the bottom lawn today, one hundred each of Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant' and 'Barr's Purple'.  I planted a couple of Cyclamen hederifolium in the border as well, and the ground is still dry.  Two hundred divots of turf is enough to lift in one day, to avoid ending up with a blister on one's palm.  It looks a bit pink anyway, and I was trying to grasp the handle rather than press down on the end.

I used to have a good population of crocus in the borders at the bottom of the garden, mostly named varieties of C. chrysanthus, but they were badly attacked by voles (or mice, or something) last winter.  I don't know if that was because the weather was so particularly harsh, or whether the rodent population is simply increasing as the garden matures.  I find a lot of little holes in the borders when I'm weeding, and we disturbed a couple of voles (or something) when we were scrantling the long grass.  One of them got scrantled, so they must not be as good at ducking under the blades as the toads.  The rodents dig down to find the crocus bulbs, which they eat, tossing discarded stems around.  Unless it was the muntjac.  Some of the few surviving clumps were tucked in close the the base of shrubs and under the protection of their stems, which I wouldn't think made any difference to a vole.  The crocus in the grass fared better for some reason.  Maybe they were harder to find, or harder work to dig up.

Two hundred bulbs spread over a large lawn don't really go very far.  My hope is that they will spread and multiply, since Crocus tommasinianus are supposed to be excellent naturalisers, and that if I add some bulbs each year, nature will increase them and do the rest.  That has been my policy with the snowdrops, and the cyclamen, which are not cheap to buy.  This year there is a good crop of cyclamen seedlings, after many years when I didn't seem to get any, so perhaps the plants appreciate my annual applications of leaf mould, or perhaps it helps that the current generation of chickens don't go into the back garden.  Some people advise you to pot up cyclamen seedlings and grow them on in individual pots in the greenhouse, which sounds like an excellent policy if you have the time.  Given how frantic it gets in my greenhouse, and how crowded, I suspect they would be very likely to be over or underwatered, or get too hot at some point in the summer, and that they are better off taking their chances in the border, under the shade of the wild gean.

Still to plant, or pot up, is the bag of Anemone blanda (blue) bulbs.  I much prefer blue to the other colours when it comes to Anemone blanda.  The bulbs are funny little black, knobbly things, which are supposed to be soaked in water overnight to rehydrate them before planting.  I keep forgetting to put them to soak on an evening when I'm going to be working in the garden the next day.  They don't last well in the garden, dwindling after a few years, and I don't know if that's because the growing conditions don't quite suit them and they die, or whether the rodents are eating them as well.

The only other unplanted bulbs are the tulips, which don't want to go in until November anyway.  I have tried to be restrained this year in my bulb orders, since they are fripperies in comparison to getting various bits of the borders sorted out.  It was such a beautiful day today outside.  Fingers crossed we have a good October and run up to Christmas, so that I can have a proper go at the things that still need digging out, and get the areas replanted, or ready for replanting in the spring.  Which is ridiculous, since what I hope for will make absolutely no difference to what the weather does.