peacocks and plant pots

It was a grey morning, but at least that meant there was no watering to do at work, except inside the tunnels, and even they were pretty damp, apart from a few odd things.  The manager had left his usual list of jobs to do over the weekend next to the till, and mine was to empty the two double-decker red trolleys, plus three of the silver ones that customers use.  That's what he left me to do the last weekend I was working, and I calculated then that it came to around 9.5 square metres of plant pots to put out for sale.

Moving that quantity of plants before left me absolutely shattered by Tuesday, and on Monday when the manager returned to work he didn't say anything encouraging, like gosh, well done for managing to move all those plants, or thank you, so I set about this weekend's trolleys at a more circumspect pace.  When I was at infants school I remember writing my first story.  The teacher gave me a gold star, and I was inordinately pleased, not withstanding the fact that the star had no value whatsoever.  I mean, you couldn't hand it in for sweets or a book or anything.  I immediately wrote another story.  I didn't get another star, and experienced a massive sense of disillusionment.  Managers take note.  Even middle aged people have their inner six year old lurking not so very far below the surface, and if they make a considerable effort and you don't recognise it at all, next time they will probably moderate their energies accordingly.

The peacock's tail is vast and resplendent.  I saw him perching on one of the finials over the door into the owners' private garden, looking very romantic, and the girl who runs the tea room at weekends found him displaying his tail outside the ladies' loo.  She has a reserved attitude to large birds, but her nervousness about approaching the peacock was outweighed by her urgent desire to go to the loo.  I heard a great deal of screaming while I was having my morning tea break, which was the peacock calling because it is the mating season, and the owners' child shouting at the peacock because he felt like it.  I have never been threatened by the peacock and think it is quite good natured, although it might not stay that way if too many children shout at it.

The manager's schedule of things to do included a long list of plants to be covered with fleece if frost was forecast.  One of my colleagues went up to the office to have a look at the weather forecast late in the afternoon, and returned baffled, since the forecast was for a minimum temperature of five degrees C, but with the possibility of frost if there were clear patches.  We compromised on fleecing the most tender and succulent herbaceous plants, like the delphiniums, and bringing some under cover in trolleys, while leaving shrubs like the pittosporums, which ought to be able to cope with 5 degrees above zero.  Really as a forecast it did not make sense, since if the minimum never dropped below five I wouldn't expect a frost, clear skies or no.  It was quite breezy, and some of the plants we were supposed to cover had grown so tall that the fleece wouldn't tuck in all the way round, so most of it will have blown off the plants it is supposed to be covering by the time it gets dark, and it felt rather like a token effort.

The goldfinches had finished their nest, or nearly done so.  I didn't like to inspect it too closely, but could see without going right up to the shrub that there was a neat rounded structure inside, where last Monday there had been just a few feathers and some moss.  I warned both of my colleagues, and put a Reserved notice on the plant.  I never saw a goldfinch in the plant centre all day, and have no idea if they will use the nest or have abandoned it, on the other hand maybe once it is finished they don't need to be in the plant centre.  The robins' nest in our greenhouse last year seemed deserted most of the time, once it was finished and she started laying, until the point where she started to sit on the eggs.  It is strange the way that most bird books are so geared to identification, without telling you much (or anything) about what the birds are actually doing when you see them.  I would like to have the nest, once the goldfinches have finished with it, or if they don't use it, because I would like to install it in the Eriobotrya 'Coppertone' in the conservatory at home, with a toy bird in it, a cheerful kitsch one made out of dyed feathers.

I got home to find that it had drizzled most of the day here, so we had the best of the weather to the north.  Not very good weather, but still better than drizzle.

topiary

I trimmed one of my topiary yews today.  I only have two, at opposite ends of the long bed in the front garden.  Most of the planting throughout the garden is billowing and informal, and I suppose the yews are slightly incongruous, in terms of their formality, and because they are not merely formal but old-fashioned, consisting of cake-stand tiers over solid bases, and a pom-pom on top.  With the modern house, I suppose they should be some irregular free-form sculptural shape.  They have come out the way they are just because that was my idea of a topiary yew.  The prototypical clipped yew.  I can say that they are post-modern, that will explain them.  They are slightly wonky because I am not very good at cutting formal shapes, and I still haven't got the line of their shoulders right, but I'm fond of them.  They are not even closely matched for shape or size, as the two plants turned out to have markedly different patterns of growth, one more upright than the other.  The taller of the two has reached its absolute maximum height ever, because if I let it get any taller I won't be able to reach the top to trim it, even standing on the top of the stepladder.  Thus our own dimensions are written into our gardens.  If I were a taller gardener I would have slightly bigger topiary.

I found a birds' nest in one of them a few years ago when I came to clip it, hidden away in the pom-pom.  It was in very good condition, and after treating it with flea spray it now lives on the hall dresser, tucked in next to the artisan pottery.  I was hoping I'd be able to do the same thing with the robins' nest in the greenhouse, and instal it in the conservatory, preferably with a joke Christmas decoration robin in it, but by the time they'd finished with it, the nest had largely disintegrated.  I'll keep my eye out for another in a better state as I cut things back this winter.

I've been reading Monty Don's Ivington Diaries.  There is somebody who loves clipped hedges.  Box, hornbeam, pleached lime.  It is an interesting and readable book, printed on nice paper.  But I couldn't be doing with all that clipping myself, which is one reason why we have very little formal hedging.  Grow what you will enjoy looking after, in a private garden you maintain yourself.  Though I am gradually adding more patches of box, in dry or dark areas, that will be cloud pruned to informal mounds as they grow together.  They should function as ground cover, and provide some structure in the winter when many herbaceous plants have been cut down, and deciduous shrubs are mere piles of twigs.  I find it reassuring at such times to have something 3D to look at.

Tomorrow we are off to see the Swiss Garden, which we were going to visit in the summer but discovered that on the day we were due to be there access would be restricted for an open-air performance of Shakespeare.  This weekend they are hosting a steam rally, which means traction engines.  I really don't understand how they work (I mean, I know the broad theory of using steam to move a piston, but I don't understand how they work in any practical sense.)  I like looking at them though, all that paint and gleaming brass, and I like the hissing noises and the smell of coal smoke.  So if Cardunculus fails to post tomorrow it is because we got back from Biggleswade very late.  Though there should be time, while the Systems Administrator does the supper.