The remnants of Christmas have been cleared away. The last four cheese stars went on the bird table. The cards have been taken down, the greenery put on the bonfire, the festive tablecloths put in the wash, the tree dismantled, and the radiator in the sitting room turned off as we retreat to the study. Does anybody wait until Twelth Night nowadays? The Christmas season seems to begin so long before Christmas these days that by the end of the New Year Bank holiday it ought to be over. The shops have probably got their Easter stuff in by now. Tradition is all very well, but the decorations would have overstayed their welcome by Friday.
Even so, it's sad taking them down. I checked one last time through the cards, putting aside those that have useful bits of information in them, like new addresses, telephone numbers, and reminders of what stage of schooling and university people's children have got to (or indeed their names). It's particularly sad taking down the tree, though it shouldn't be. Apart from the fact that the needles would have started to fall off pretty soon (they hung on well. Fresh tree, cold house), it was already starting to shower the room with small winged seeds as the cones opened. And I'd get bored with it, if it were there all the time. So the special glass baubles all went back into their dedicated boxes, the red and clear drops from Heals into long thin trays with internal card dividers and a concertina of tissue paper, the big Polish balls into a square box like a cake carton. The heavier and scratchier decorations go in the bottom of another box, the bread and butter baubles on top of those, and the most delicate of the rest form the top layer, along with a red Ikea cookie cutter that we found as we were taking the tree outside. We always find one after taking the tree out, sometimes not spotting it for days.
I saved the cones in case they came in useful. I'm not exactly sure what they will be useful for, and in the meantime they will emit a steady stream of seeds, but it seemed a dreadful waste to burn them. If we were suddenly to build a rustic folly anywhere in the garden we would definitely need fir cones. All the best rustic summerhouses are decorated with them. The branches will be shredded, and used as mulch for the blueberry bushes, since conifer litter is acid and blueberries like acid conditions and dislike manure. The trunk will be sawn up and burnt in the stove, unless we have something that needs propping up, in which case it could have a second career as a pole. A couple of branches of the wild gean, that were sagging badly under the weight of the climbing rose 'Paul's Himalayan Musk', are supported with old rhododendron branches, to stop them from collapsing over the Mahonia japonica that was supposed to be growing in the shade of the gean (the Mahonia itself is collapsing over the clipped box that was supposed to be surrounding it as ground cover).
There is a last bit of Christmas food to eat up, as I made the chicken carcass into stock. That is one reason for buying free range birds, the fact that they have good strong bones and make proper stock that sets to a jelly when cold, quite apart from the welfare argument. I used half the stock just now for leek and potato soup, with an experimental squeeze of lemon juice, and the Systems Administrator was muttering about using the other half in a Thai soup or stew. It is blowing a hooley, and raining extremely hard from time to time, mixed with hail. I've never seen the surface of the pond whipped to a chop like that before. The cold I felt I might be fighting off through most of December began to develop on New Year's Eve and has got to a Dame Celia Molestrangler level of huskiness, so it could be an afternoon for the Christmas books. I am befuddled by not working yesterday and the day before, plus the cold, and keep feeling as though it should later in the week than Tuesday.
Showing posts with label Christmas tree. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas tree. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
decorating the tree
This morning we put up the Christmas tree. This had a comforting element of ritual. I searched fruitlessly through the landing cupboard for a red towel to put under the stand, to keep any spilt water off the floor, before remembering that I have a red table cloth (used in the past for collecting bee swarms) and looked for that with my beekeeping kit, before recalling that it was in a box in the spare room. We screwed the base of the tree into the stand, and turned it round several times trying to find the best side to face into the room, and shuffled it back and forwards so that the top didn't quite touch the sloping ceiling. Then the Systems Administrator went out, and left me to do the decorations.
Last year's lights had miraculously not tangled themselves up in the bag, and still worked (did you see the Matt cartoon of 3 December about Christmas tree lights?). I wasn't too happy, as I balanced on the second from top step of the ladder trying to attach the first string of lights, to look down and see Our Ginger chewing the second set. They still function, so he can't have bitten through the insulation. I am cautious enough about tree lights to turn them off while I fiddle about arranging them on the tree.
I like getting the decorations out of their boxes. Newspaper columnists with space to fill write annually about what's fashionable in trees this year. Does anybody take any notice, or are most people like us, decorating their tree with whatever they had last year, plus one or two additions? We have a set of slender glass drops, most of them a soft and lustrous red, three clear with snowflake patterns. I got those in Heals, probably over twenty years ago. There are some 'Shaker' decorations also dating from the 80s, bought over several years from the now-defunct Shaker Shop. Shaker Christmas tree decorations are almost certainly a misnomer, as from what I know of Shaker beliefs I can't think they had any such thing. These are folksy. There is a wooden teddy bear with articulated leg joints and a tartan scarf, a giraffe with wings, an angel with organza ribbon wings and a metal halo that goes at the top of the tree, and a secondary angel with checked cotton wings. There is a black cat with pipecleaner-thin arms and legs, wearing red mittens and a scarf, that gives me an odd frisson and sets off Strange Fruit in my mind as it hangs. There are three large glass balls, bought on holiday in Cracow with my parents and brought back as hand luggage.
Then there are lesser baubles, some comparatively classy ones from John Lewis, and some cheap and cheerful from B&Q. There is a set of sequined fruit, and a sequined bee, and a red metal trumpet and a couple of cookie cutters, one inexplicably shaped like a pig. The best ornaments go in the middle part of the tree, not right at the top where I'm likely to drop them putting them on or removing them, and the zone nearest the ground gets the coloured raffia ones, and the metal decorations from Ikea, since they are liable to be chewed or batted off the tree by the cats. There are a few unexpectedly heavy balls that have to be strung from stout twigs, or the very base of side branches, so that their weight won't bend the branches down too far.
The colour scheme is roughly red, white, gold and silver, but it's not that strict, and the look is a weird mixture of Victorian baroque glitter meets homespun crafts. There is no tinsel. And that's how it is. Every year. I don't want it to be different. I like getting the hanging cat and the Heals pendants out of the box. I don't care if purple, or white, or organic home gathered fruits are in fashion this year. Fashion has no place here. Likewise I do not feel any 'peer pressure to buy the whole of the White Company window display' to deck my festive table, which will be decorated with the same white lace table cloth and red imitation jacquard cloth it had last year, and the year before that. I have even washed and ironed them, though I haven't managed to get the wax stains from last year's candles out of the red cloth. We will bring out a very large hurricane lamp that someone gave us a couple of years back (customs can evolve) and I will make a wreath to go round the bottom of the hurricane lamp, and a table arrangement, using twigs and berries out of the garden. I will save on buying a piece of oasis foam and use a large potato as the base of the arrangement.
This year's tree is rather a monster. I was worried as we brought it up from the garage that we'd knocked the terminal bud off, because I have a thing about not cutting the tops off Christmas trees, but it's just as well it's no taller. It fits under the ceiling inside the door to the veranda with a centimetre to spare, no more. It looks very...vigorous. There are some strong branches shooting out at random heights above ground, so it is not a neat tapered cone. You can tell that it was not regularly disbudded or dosed with hormones like the ones in Gardeners World the Friday before last. The upper half is studded with cones, large and handsome. There is something wild and definitely Ent-like about it. I never bother with putting out sherry and mince pies for Father Christmas, but I could imagine the tree going for them, in the dark small hours. I'm rather pleased with it. I'm sure that lots of spirits will come and take refuge in it over the shortest days, which is after all the point of having a Christmas tree. I would never want a plastic one. I know that they don't drop needles on the floor, and they are neat, and some are very realistic nowadays, but a Christmas tree has to be a real plant. You can't expect the spirits to live in a plastic tree.
As we'd got the double doors open to bring in the tree the postman arrived, and he and I chatted about Christmas trees while he filled in the paperwork for a parcel, and it turned out that he knows my employers, because they are great fans of Scottish reeling, and he is in the ceilidh band that plays for their dances. He sent them his regards. The postman didn't sound Scottish. He must just like the music, which is fair enough. It's a small world sometimes.
Last year's lights had miraculously not tangled themselves up in the bag, and still worked (did you see the Matt cartoon of 3 December about Christmas tree lights?). I wasn't too happy, as I balanced on the second from top step of the ladder trying to attach the first string of lights, to look down and see Our Ginger chewing the second set. They still function, so he can't have bitten through the insulation. I am cautious enough about tree lights to turn them off while I fiddle about arranging them on the tree.
I like getting the decorations out of their boxes. Newspaper columnists with space to fill write annually about what's fashionable in trees this year. Does anybody take any notice, or are most people like us, decorating their tree with whatever they had last year, plus one or two additions? We have a set of slender glass drops, most of them a soft and lustrous red, three clear with snowflake patterns. I got those in Heals, probably over twenty years ago. There are some 'Shaker' decorations also dating from the 80s, bought over several years from the now-defunct Shaker Shop. Shaker Christmas tree decorations are almost certainly a misnomer, as from what I know of Shaker beliefs I can't think they had any such thing. These are folksy. There is a wooden teddy bear with articulated leg joints and a tartan scarf, a giraffe with wings, an angel with organza ribbon wings and a metal halo that goes at the top of the tree, and a secondary angel with checked cotton wings. There is a black cat with pipecleaner-thin arms and legs, wearing red mittens and a scarf, that gives me an odd frisson and sets off Strange Fruit in my mind as it hangs. There are three large glass balls, bought on holiday in Cracow with my parents and brought back as hand luggage.
Then there are lesser baubles, some comparatively classy ones from John Lewis, and some cheap and cheerful from B&Q. There is a set of sequined fruit, and a sequined bee, and a red metal trumpet and a couple of cookie cutters, one inexplicably shaped like a pig. The best ornaments go in the middle part of the tree, not right at the top where I'm likely to drop them putting them on or removing them, and the zone nearest the ground gets the coloured raffia ones, and the metal decorations from Ikea, since they are liable to be chewed or batted off the tree by the cats. There are a few unexpectedly heavy balls that have to be strung from stout twigs, or the very base of side branches, so that their weight won't bend the branches down too far.
The colour scheme is roughly red, white, gold and silver, but it's not that strict, and the look is a weird mixture of Victorian baroque glitter meets homespun crafts. There is no tinsel. And that's how it is. Every year. I don't want it to be different. I like getting the hanging cat and the Heals pendants out of the box. I don't care if purple, or white, or organic home gathered fruits are in fashion this year. Fashion has no place here. Likewise I do not feel any 'peer pressure to buy the whole of the White Company window display' to deck my festive table, which will be decorated with the same white lace table cloth and red imitation jacquard cloth it had last year, and the year before that. I have even washed and ironed them, though I haven't managed to get the wax stains from last year's candles out of the red cloth. We will bring out a very large hurricane lamp that someone gave us a couple of years back (customs can evolve) and I will make a wreath to go round the bottom of the hurricane lamp, and a table arrangement, using twigs and berries out of the garden. I will save on buying a piece of oasis foam and use a large potato as the base of the arrangement.
This year's tree is rather a monster. I was worried as we brought it up from the garage that we'd knocked the terminal bud off, because I have a thing about not cutting the tops off Christmas trees, but it's just as well it's no taller. It fits under the ceiling inside the door to the veranda with a centimetre to spare, no more. It looks very...vigorous. There are some strong branches shooting out at random heights above ground, so it is not a neat tapered cone. You can tell that it was not regularly disbudded or dosed with hormones like the ones in Gardeners World the Friday before last. The upper half is studded with cones, large and handsome. There is something wild and definitely Ent-like about it. I never bother with putting out sherry and mince pies for Father Christmas, but I could imagine the tree going for them, in the dark small hours. I'm rather pleased with it. I'm sure that lots of spirits will come and take refuge in it over the shortest days, which is after all the point of having a Christmas tree. I would never want a plastic one. I know that they don't drop needles on the floor, and they are neat, and some are very realistic nowadays, but a Christmas tree has to be a real plant. You can't expect the spirits to live in a plastic tree.
As we'd got the double doors open to bring in the tree the postman arrived, and he and I chatted about Christmas trees while he filled in the paperwork for a parcel, and it turned out that he knows my employers, because they are great fans of Scottish reeling, and he is in the ceilidh band that plays for their dances. He sent them his regards. The postman didn't sound Scottish. He must just like the music, which is fair enough. It's a small world sometimes.
Saturday, 17 December 2011
a bird in the hand
It is almost the shortest day. When I went out at half past seven to open the pop hole of the chicken house and sprinkle their morning treat of porridge oats and Value sultanas, the chickens were still lined up on their perch, and just looked at me through the windows. It was obviously too early and too dark for them to get up.
The remaining Christmas trees are meeting a certain amount of consumer resistance. One couple asked me if we would be cutting any more, which I took as a coded comment that they didn't like the ones we had. I explained that there probably wouldn't be any more, as I thought there weren't any more left to cut, a coded response that yes, I knew the trees were an odd looking lot but unfortunately they were the absolute last scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. Some people did buy trees, one man saying cheerfully that his tree only had one side, but he didn't want to go up the road and pay fifty pounds for one. My colleague sawed the bottom off a tree for someone dressed in full biking leathers, face piercings and skull necklace. I didn't nip out into the car park to see if he was actually going to drive away on a Harley-Davidson with the tree strapped to his back. I should have really.
A customer came to tell me that there was a sparrow hawk 'in your thing down there'. I went down to the bottom of the plant centre, and there was indeed a hawk flying around in the top half of the shade tunnel. The tunnel has a green netting roof, but open sides, and the bird could have flown straight out if it had come lower down, instead of which it was battering itself against the netting roof as it tried to fly upwards towards the sky, which it could see through the shade netting. Small birds have done the same thing in our conservatory at home, flying repeatedly into the transparent roof, and very difficult to remove they are too, but I've never had to deal with a hawk before, and didn't honestly know how I was going to get it out. I went into the tunnel from the other end, and walked towards the bird in the hope that it would fly away from me and find the end opening, but it went on flying into the roof, then flopped down on to a plant and fell on its back on the ground.
I picked it up, holding its wings against its body so that it couldn't flap. I don't know if that is the recommended way of handling a tired and frightened wild bird, but I thought that if it flapped in real panic it might injure itself, or I might drop it in surprise, or it might catch me in the eye. I put it down, the right way up, in the border outside the tunnel and suggested to the customer that the best thing now might be to leave it to recover. The owners don't have cats, and were out with the dogs, so it seemed a fairly safe bet just leaving it on the ground. I checked five minutes later and it had gone.
It was a very beautiful creature, with a lot of red in its colouring. It looked huge with its full wingspan extended, but tiny in my hands, no larger than a blackbird. I can identify a kestrel hovering because I know that is the only UK raptor that can hover, but I don't know much about the markings of hawks and haven't seen many close up. The Systems Administrator on hearing about it thought that it was almost certainly a kestrel and not a sparrowhawk, because sparrowhawks hunt among trees quite close to the ground, and shouldn't have had any difficulty finding their way out of the tunnel via the side openings. That sounds sensible to me, but having seen the bird ineffectually flying around in the tunnel, and then held it, I still couldn't tell you what species it was. The customer seemed relieved I'd rescued it. Compared to him I did have the strategic advantage that I was wearing gloves, and some people are squeamish about handling birds, which I can understand. Birds are very alien creatures close up, so bony and light, with scaly legs and strange eyes. Add talons and a hooked beak, and they aren't something you necessarily want to mess with.
The remaining Christmas trees are meeting a certain amount of consumer resistance. One couple asked me if we would be cutting any more, which I took as a coded comment that they didn't like the ones we had. I explained that there probably wouldn't be any more, as I thought there weren't any more left to cut, a coded response that yes, I knew the trees were an odd looking lot but unfortunately they were the absolute last scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. Some people did buy trees, one man saying cheerfully that his tree only had one side, but he didn't want to go up the road and pay fifty pounds for one. My colleague sawed the bottom off a tree for someone dressed in full biking leathers, face piercings and skull necklace. I didn't nip out into the car park to see if he was actually going to drive away on a Harley-Davidson with the tree strapped to his back. I should have really.
A customer came to tell me that there was a sparrow hawk 'in your thing down there'. I went down to the bottom of the plant centre, and there was indeed a hawk flying around in the top half of the shade tunnel. The tunnel has a green netting roof, but open sides, and the bird could have flown straight out if it had come lower down, instead of which it was battering itself against the netting roof as it tried to fly upwards towards the sky, which it could see through the shade netting. Small birds have done the same thing in our conservatory at home, flying repeatedly into the transparent roof, and very difficult to remove they are too, but I've never had to deal with a hawk before, and didn't honestly know how I was going to get it out. I went into the tunnel from the other end, and walked towards the bird in the hope that it would fly away from me and find the end opening, but it went on flying into the roof, then flopped down on to a plant and fell on its back on the ground.
I picked it up, holding its wings against its body so that it couldn't flap. I don't know if that is the recommended way of handling a tired and frightened wild bird, but I thought that if it flapped in real panic it might injure itself, or I might drop it in surprise, or it might catch me in the eye. I put it down, the right way up, in the border outside the tunnel and suggested to the customer that the best thing now might be to leave it to recover. The owners don't have cats, and were out with the dogs, so it seemed a fairly safe bet just leaving it on the ground. I checked five minutes later and it had gone.
It was a very beautiful creature, with a lot of red in its colouring. It looked huge with its full wingspan extended, but tiny in my hands, no larger than a blackbird. I can identify a kestrel hovering because I know that is the only UK raptor that can hover, but I don't know much about the markings of hawks and haven't seen many close up. The Systems Administrator on hearing about it thought that it was almost certainly a kestrel and not a sparrowhawk, because sparrowhawks hunt among trees quite close to the ground, and shouldn't have had any difficulty finding their way out of the tunnel via the side openings. That sounds sensible to me, but having seen the bird ineffectually flying around in the tunnel, and then held it, I still couldn't tell you what species it was. The customer seemed relieved I'd rescued it. Compared to him I did have the strategic advantage that I was wearing gloves, and some people are squeamish about handling birds, which I can understand. Birds are very alien creatures close up, so bony and light, with scaly legs and strange eyes. Add talons and a hooked beak, and they aren't something you necessarily want to mess with.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
missions accomplished
The truck, which started beautifully yesterday afternoon, refused to fire this morning. As at the third attempt the starter motor died away into a sluggish grrh grrh grhh, I began to think that we weren't going to get the Christmas tree today, but the Systems Administrator trotted away to get a can of Easy Start and sprayed some into the air intake, and the truck suddenly coughed into noisy life. I'd forgotten that this is what cars used to be like. It is one reason why I don't dare drive the truck, apart from the fact that it feels as though I am venturing on to the road in something the size of my kitchen, and I don't understand the modifications the SA has made to the ignition system. Since it broke it now starts off a button, not the ignition key. The new arrangement passed the MoT, so that's fine, and looking on the bright side the truck is very unlikely to be stolen. Nobody would want it, and if they did they'd probably never get it to start.
We went first off to get the mushroom compost. There was still a large puddle in one corner of the yard, but we found a dry place to stand and shovel. A man in a bobble hat came and asked if we were bagging it or chucking it straight on the back of the truck, and I said I would like 25 bags if I had enough bags, and should I pay him or the office? He seemed keen for me to pay him, and let me have my 25 bags for less than what I thought the going rate was, saying that they would charge me an arm and a leg up in the office. I decided that this arrangement was between him and his employer, but it suited me as I'd discovered I didn't have enough money for 25 bags, or even 20. Who is to say how large a bag is anyway?
Then we went to the plant centre to collect a tree, taking the truck for a short sprint up the A12, which was adventurous of us. It's good for it to have a run. I nipped off to wash some of the manure off my wellingtons, and by the time I got back the SA had inspected the Christmas trees, and said they were an odd-looking lot. We'd forgotten to measure the height of the ceiling where the tree is to go, or to bring a tape measure to check the size of them. I could have borrowed a tape, but that wouldn't have been any use given I didn't know how tall I wanted it to be. Around 27 years ago, when we were living in a rented flat in Highgate, we set off to Marks and Spencers to buy curtains without having first measured the window, so we haven't progressed in more than a quarter of a century. The SA had picked out a tree that looked a nice shade of green, and had a lot of cones on, but a very obvious kink in the top 45cm of trunk. We agreed that the wobble added character, and that it was a lovely tree, especially for what is was going to cost us.
Back home, I was startled to see two flowers out on Camellia japonica 'Alba Simplex'. This is a beautiful old variety, with simple white flowers (the clue's in the name) bearing central bosses of bright yellow stamens. It makes a dense, bushy shrub, and once established seems to cope well with dry conditions. I never irrigate ours, and after seven years it has made a well-clothed shrub more than a metre tall and wide, which puts it on course to achieve the International Camellia Society's indicated size of 2m after ten years. It is a nice thing, though it isn't supposed to be flowering in December.
I was less pleased to see that during the heating oil delivery two twigs had got broken off my Ligustrum japonicum 'Rotundifolium'. This is a jolly little evergreen privet, with wavy edged, glossy, dark green leaves. It grows so slowly that two twigs is a lot.
After getting ready for a woodland charity talk this evening I pruned roses for a bit, but stopped at half past three. It was getting too dark to see what I was cutting off, and experience teaches that most times I have accidentally poked myself in the eye while working among shrubs have been in the last half hour before dusk. It's the combination of being slightly tired and rather cold, and not being able to see properly what you're doing.
We went first off to get the mushroom compost. There was still a large puddle in one corner of the yard, but we found a dry place to stand and shovel. A man in a bobble hat came and asked if we were bagging it or chucking it straight on the back of the truck, and I said I would like 25 bags if I had enough bags, and should I pay him or the office? He seemed keen for me to pay him, and let me have my 25 bags for less than what I thought the going rate was, saying that they would charge me an arm and a leg up in the office. I decided that this arrangement was between him and his employer, but it suited me as I'd discovered I didn't have enough money for 25 bags, or even 20. Who is to say how large a bag is anyway?
Then we went to the plant centre to collect a tree, taking the truck for a short sprint up the A12, which was adventurous of us. It's good for it to have a run. I nipped off to wash some of the manure off my wellingtons, and by the time I got back the SA had inspected the Christmas trees, and said they were an odd-looking lot. We'd forgotten to measure the height of the ceiling where the tree is to go, or to bring a tape measure to check the size of them. I could have borrowed a tape, but that wouldn't have been any use given I didn't know how tall I wanted it to be. Around 27 years ago, when we were living in a rented flat in Highgate, we set off to Marks and Spencers to buy curtains without having first measured the window, so we haven't progressed in more than a quarter of a century. The SA had picked out a tree that looked a nice shade of green, and had a lot of cones on, but a very obvious kink in the top 45cm of trunk. We agreed that the wobble added character, and that it was a lovely tree, especially for what is was going to cost us.
Back home, I was startled to see two flowers out on Camellia japonica 'Alba Simplex'. This is a beautiful old variety, with simple white flowers (the clue's in the name) bearing central bosses of bright yellow stamens. It makes a dense, bushy shrub, and once established seems to cope well with dry conditions. I never irrigate ours, and after seven years it has made a well-clothed shrub more than a metre tall and wide, which puts it on course to achieve the International Camellia Society's indicated size of 2m after ten years. It is a nice thing, though it isn't supposed to be flowering in December.
I was less pleased to see that during the heating oil delivery two twigs had got broken off my Ligustrum japonicum 'Rotundifolium'. This is a jolly little evergreen privet, with wavy edged, glossy, dark green leaves. It grows so slowly that two twigs is a lot.
After getting ready for a woodland charity talk this evening I pruned roses for a bit, but stopped at half past three. It was getting too dark to see what I was cutting off, and experience teaches that most times I have accidentally poked myself in the eye while working among shrubs have been in the last half hour before dusk. It's the combination of being slightly tired and rather cold, and not being able to see properly what you're doing.
Monday, 5 December 2011
a quiet day
We are finally going to have a computer out in the shop, so that we will be able to send e-mails about the availability of plants and suchlike without having to go up to the office. They are going to lay a cable when they dig a trench for the drains for the new tea room. Next spring. Still, it's something to look forward to.
Somebody rang wanting advice about retaining moisture around the hundreds of trees she had planted this spring, and we had a long conversation about whether she could use the chippings from a large horse chestnut she'd had removed (undesirable, better to let them compost down first) and whether a mulch of mushroom compost would help (yes, brilliant stuff, use it myself, just don't pile it in contact with the trunks, and best to apply when the soil is less dry). She has a bowser, and watered all the trees every week this summer, and couldn't face doing it again. We got on to the properties of clay soil (some of the water in it is bound so tightly to the tiny soil particles that it isn't available for plants to take up, so they aren't necessarily all that drought resistant. Mushroom compost will help over time) and how severe and widespread the drought was. She went away sounding happy and said our chat had been very useful. Unfortunately it won't result in a single extra penny through the till, at least in the immediate future.
Somebody else rang asking if we had any liquidambars, and I spent a long time describing what we had, and how big they were now, and how much money, and what colour their leaves went in the autumn. Then he asked if we could send one, because he lived in Lincolnshire, and I had to explain that we could send the small plants by mail order, but not the ten foot trees. He wanted a ten foot tree, because he said he didn't have that many years left, and that he was on dialysis, and getting to us would be difficult. I felt very sorry that he had kidney failure, which I know is life-limiting even with dialysis, and leaves you feeling grotty, but I couldn't help him with the large trees. They are too big to send by mail order. The parcel company wouldn't and couldn't do it.
Somebody else rang asking if we could keep some reserved plants for longer, because she couldn't get over to collect them because her husband was ill. It turned out that he was in hospital with pneumonia. I promised I would make a note on the plants that she still definitely wanted them, but might be delayed collecting them, and told her that she had other things to worry about and should not worry about the plants.
I rang a woman who was down as wanting a fan trained apricot. She sounded slightly surprised that she could have wanted such a thing, and explained that she wasn't well, and hadn't been for fourteen months because she'd had a bad fall, and she'd had to get somebody in to Do the garden, and the garden was a mess. I suddenly realised that it was The Woman Who Wanted 16 Lavenders. Then she told me how difficult the soil in her garden was, and how all the trees she planted in it died, and I thought she should probably not have a fan trained apricot. I have seen the roots on these fan trained fruit trees, which we potted up ourselves, and they are teeny-tiny, not at all suitable for an elderly and ill lady with rubbish soil and dubious garden help, so I had to talk her out of having an apricot, at least this year. It turned out that she was very pleased with the lavenders and believes that our plant centre is wonderful, which was nice.
A cheerful-sounding woman who lives near York was delighted that we could send her a crab apple whip by post. She was one of the people I rang yesterday to let them know that their plants had arrived, and it hadn't been recorded on the paperwork that she lived at the other end of the country, although I had thought that I didn't recognise the dialling code. Another person I rang yesterday came in today to collect her plant, but it was a Cornus that only cost £8.95. And unfortunately not enough people thought we were wonderful, and we didn't take much through the till, despite our best efforts telephoning people.
The gardeners and the owner spent the morning cutting Christmas trees. Due to past management, or lack of it, the trees grown on the estate are mostly rather tall and skinny. This year some of them have grown a fine crop of cones, the first time I've seen them do that. Because our house is split level (very 1960s) the sitting room rises to one and a half storeys high, so we like a tall tree, and the price of the trees at work is very reasonable, maybe reflecting the limited local demand for trees 4m high. This leaves us with a nice decision to make, which I will put to the Systems Administrator, though maybe not this evening as the rich fruity cold, which had been showing signs of abating, has returned with a vengeance. It is a bit earlier than I would like a tree, as they will have been cut for 20 days already by Christmas Day, and a fresh one nearer the time would be better. The gardeners cut 30 trees today, more than we usually harvest. If they sell well they may cut some more, and I can have one that was chopped down closer to Christmas. If they don't cut more then we'll end up with one from this batch anyway, but the nicest ones will have gone and we'll be left with the oddly shaped, weird, and mutilated ones to choose from. Games Theory is right up the Systems Administrator's street, so we could be in for a prolonged discussion of tactics.
The manager looked at the dead damson tree and said he thought it had been hit by a strimmer, judging by the horizontal line of damage in the bark. The owner told me that I had done the right thing to stick to procedures. They are going to give the horrible woman a free replacement tree anyway. I knew they would. I suggested to the manager that maybe we could have a list of customers to whom the normal rules don't apply, because they have spent a lot of money, or are friends with the owners, or big influential cheeses on the East Anglian dinner party circuit. If they are going to get no-questions-asked replacement plants anyway, the staff might as well not bother trying to apply the normal procedure for returns, and be saved a distressing encounter. The manager said that was a good idea. It won't happen.
Somebody rang wanting advice about retaining moisture around the hundreds of trees she had planted this spring, and we had a long conversation about whether she could use the chippings from a large horse chestnut she'd had removed (undesirable, better to let them compost down first) and whether a mulch of mushroom compost would help (yes, brilliant stuff, use it myself, just don't pile it in contact with the trunks, and best to apply when the soil is less dry). She has a bowser, and watered all the trees every week this summer, and couldn't face doing it again. We got on to the properties of clay soil (some of the water in it is bound so tightly to the tiny soil particles that it isn't available for plants to take up, so they aren't necessarily all that drought resistant. Mushroom compost will help over time) and how severe and widespread the drought was. She went away sounding happy and said our chat had been very useful. Unfortunately it won't result in a single extra penny through the till, at least in the immediate future.
Somebody else rang asking if we had any liquidambars, and I spent a long time describing what we had, and how big they were now, and how much money, and what colour their leaves went in the autumn. Then he asked if we could send one, because he lived in Lincolnshire, and I had to explain that we could send the small plants by mail order, but not the ten foot trees. He wanted a ten foot tree, because he said he didn't have that many years left, and that he was on dialysis, and getting to us would be difficult. I felt very sorry that he had kidney failure, which I know is life-limiting even with dialysis, and leaves you feeling grotty, but I couldn't help him with the large trees. They are too big to send by mail order. The parcel company wouldn't and couldn't do it.
Somebody else rang asking if we could keep some reserved plants for longer, because she couldn't get over to collect them because her husband was ill. It turned out that he was in hospital with pneumonia. I promised I would make a note on the plants that she still definitely wanted them, but might be delayed collecting them, and told her that she had other things to worry about and should not worry about the plants.
I rang a woman who was down as wanting a fan trained apricot. She sounded slightly surprised that she could have wanted such a thing, and explained that she wasn't well, and hadn't been for fourteen months because she'd had a bad fall, and she'd had to get somebody in to Do the garden, and the garden was a mess. I suddenly realised that it was The Woman Who Wanted 16 Lavenders. Then she told me how difficult the soil in her garden was, and how all the trees she planted in it died, and I thought she should probably not have a fan trained apricot. I have seen the roots on these fan trained fruit trees, which we potted up ourselves, and they are teeny-tiny, not at all suitable for an elderly and ill lady with rubbish soil and dubious garden help, so I had to talk her out of having an apricot, at least this year. It turned out that she was very pleased with the lavenders and believes that our plant centre is wonderful, which was nice.
A cheerful-sounding woman who lives near York was delighted that we could send her a crab apple whip by post. She was one of the people I rang yesterday to let them know that their plants had arrived, and it hadn't been recorded on the paperwork that she lived at the other end of the country, although I had thought that I didn't recognise the dialling code. Another person I rang yesterday came in today to collect her plant, but it was a Cornus that only cost £8.95. And unfortunately not enough people thought we were wonderful, and we didn't take much through the till, despite our best efforts telephoning people.
The gardeners and the owner spent the morning cutting Christmas trees. Due to past management, or lack of it, the trees grown on the estate are mostly rather tall and skinny. This year some of them have grown a fine crop of cones, the first time I've seen them do that. Because our house is split level (very 1960s) the sitting room rises to one and a half storeys high, so we like a tall tree, and the price of the trees at work is very reasonable, maybe reflecting the limited local demand for trees 4m high. This leaves us with a nice decision to make, which I will put to the Systems Administrator, though maybe not this evening as the rich fruity cold, which had been showing signs of abating, has returned with a vengeance. It is a bit earlier than I would like a tree, as they will have been cut for 20 days already by Christmas Day, and a fresh one nearer the time would be better. The gardeners cut 30 trees today, more than we usually harvest. If they sell well they may cut some more, and I can have one that was chopped down closer to Christmas. If they don't cut more then we'll end up with one from this batch anyway, but the nicest ones will have gone and we'll be left with the oddly shaped, weird, and mutilated ones to choose from. Games Theory is right up the Systems Administrator's street, so we could be in for a prolonged discussion of tactics.
The manager looked at the dead damson tree and said he thought it had been hit by a strimmer, judging by the horizontal line of damage in the bark. The owner told me that I had done the right thing to stick to procedures. They are going to give the horrible woman a free replacement tree anyway. I knew they would. I suggested to the manager that maybe we could have a list of customers to whom the normal rules don't apply, because they have spent a lot of money, or are friends with the owners, or big influential cheeses on the East Anglian dinner party circuit. If they are going to get no-questions-asked replacement plants anyway, the staff might as well not bother trying to apply the normal procedure for returns, and be saved a distressing encounter. The manager said that was a good idea. It won't happen.
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