The car was properly iced this morning, so I left it running in the drive to defrost. We have no passers by, being a dead end beyond the farmyard with no public footpath running past the property, so the chances of someone arriving in the garden just as I'm defrosting the car and driving it away are vanishingly low. When I got in I was disconcerted to see a red warning light shaped like a thermometer flashing on the dashboard. That never happened before. I tried the Skoda equivalent of switching it off and switching it on again, and the warning light disappeared. This little piece of extra fiddling about, plus the fact that while I'd allowed extra time for the roads being icy I hadn't allowed quite enough, made me almost but not quite late for work.
There were only two of us in, as the manager had the day off, and we didn't make much of an impact on the great jumble of plants that arrived from Italy last week. In fact, as a delivery of trees arrived mid-morning from Norfolk we ended the day with more plants on the grass at the back of the plant centre than when we started. I was still avoiding using my left hand for lifting, and my colleague had a bad cold, so we made a feeble pair unloading the Norfolk consignment, and as the delivery driver helped us he asked if we were short staffed. Yes, we were. I have no idea why someone booked the tree delivery for a day when there would only be two people in. Some of the Norfolk trees were bare root, their nether regions swaddled in black plastic sacks. My colleague made noises about maybe heeling some of them in later, which looking at the state of her cold I doubted was going to happen. I was certainly not going to volunteer to dig holes, and thought that if the manager had wanted them got into the ground he could have left instructions for the gardener. I did find some fleece, and cover the black plastic bags with that, in case tonight was another frosty one.
It was very quiet. The weekend was apparently quite busy, but people weren't coming to buy plants on a Monday morning in late November. My colleague said she was willing to stay late, as she likes being able to come in later, not being a morning person, so I left before she tilled up, but we won't have taken much. A couple of people came to collect plants on behalf of other people, but they were already paid for.
And that really was that. Back at home the boiler man came, could find no reason for the boiler to have cut out, and serviced it. It is running at 92% efficiency, which is one per cent down from last year. This is apparently normal. I don't know if it loses a percentage point every year. The Systems Administrator installed my new printer (the old one was very cheap, a false economy, and never worked very well and then didn't work at all) and spruced up my laptop with downloads and a sort-out. A programme called Turbo Chickens had got in somehow. I have no idea what that is. I didn't put it there. Further investigations on the net revealed that the new component in the upstairs loo had a flow restrictor that you are supposed to remove if you have low water pressure. We have, so the SA (who now wishes to be known as the Cistern Administrator) removed it, and the tank now refills in less than twenty minutes. It still makes a faint squawk when it's finished filling, like the dying exhalation of Monty Python's parrot, but the annoying low hum has stopped.
Showing posts with label deliveries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deliveries. Show all posts
Monday, 28 November 2011
Saturday, 19 November 2011
nice day, not many customers
It was a very beautiful morning, with a streaky pink sky behind the lime avenue on the lettuce farm, and layers of mist laying over the fields. I was rather surprised, on getting into the car and flicking the wipers to clear the condensation from the windscreen, to discover that it was not moisture on the inside of the car but ice on the outside, and that the wipers would not flick because they were frozen down.
The farming programme on R4 was talking about the severity of the drought, from Shopshire across to East Anglia. It's true. Recent rain has moistened the top few centimetres of soil, but dig down and it's still dry. If we don't get some proper rain at some point over the winter then next year is going to be very difficult, for farmers and gardeners. By the time I reached the Stour valley the radio had moved on to the Today programme, and a politician was explaining how within the next two weeks the European economy could go over the cliff. I suppose it could. The idea seemed to exist in a different world to the one in which clear morning sunlight shone on a high tide in Constable country, and beyond the river reeds and pastures stretched away.
There had been a delivery of shrubs from France since the last time I was at work. The boss has bought plants from this French supplier for all the time I've worked there, including lilacs, some varieties of Philadelphus, and hydrangeas. We don't take many deliveries from them each year, and it did seem as though we had a year's supply of Philadephus 'Buckley's Quill' sitting on the grass at the back of the plant centre. There were some fine chunky Magnolia 'Elizabeth', which is a good yellow flowered variety (though maybe not the best), but alas, the customers we had waiting for them had all either found plants elsewhere in the meantime, or weren't prepared to pay the price of such large specimens. Over sixty pounds for a magnolia is painful.
The wood turner who lives in the village, and makes wooden pepper mills and fruit that we sell in the shop, using wood from the estate, called in to see what extra stock we needed. As we chatted I discovered one of the drawbacks of living in a conservation area with no street lights (on account of the light pollution). The pavement in his street was dug up for work on the gas main, and going out after dark he fell over the barriers around the hole, which were not lit. The gas company say it is not their fault there were no lights, as the council wouldn't permit them. The wood turner is taking Warfarin and so vulnerable to internal injuries such as you get from walking straight into a metal barrier, so he's not at all happy. He was even less happy when his doctor told him that if he developed a headache he should call an ambulance immediately, in case it was an aneurysm. I thought that if the council had really forbidden any lights, even small ones, for an a obstruction on the pavement, then that was a pretty stupid decision. Though I suppose if you know you are at risk from knocks and bumps and you live in a village with no street lights, you might do well to invest in a decent torch.
The wood turner's misfortune reminded me again how quickly life can turn. One minute things are fine, the next, not. A case in point being my hand, still swollen to a shiny potato, though the tide of red seems to have peaked at the first joint of my middle finger and half way down the back of my hand, and is now receding. There has to be something in there, and I keep hoping it will work its way out. I have my eye on a pair of leather pruning gloves, with suede gauntlet cuffs to protect the wrists, which I'd better get and wear when working around roses and other plants with substantial thorns. I was wearing gloves when the accident happened, and trying to be careful, but obviously the gloves were not up to the job and I was not careful enough. I must remember to swap them for normal gloves for fingertip weeding, since expensive leather wears through at the fingertips every bit as quickly as normal rubberised fabric.
Trade seemed quiet, but I learned on getting home that the A14 was horribly blocked due to resurfacing work following an earlier accident, with enormously long tailbacks. If you had been thinking of paying us a visit, and then heard that the A14 was one gigantic traffic jam, you would probably have altered your plans and decided to do something else this afternoon. But who knows? Maybe it is the drought, or the prospect of Europe's economy going off a cliff.
The farming programme on R4 was talking about the severity of the drought, from Shopshire across to East Anglia. It's true. Recent rain has moistened the top few centimetres of soil, but dig down and it's still dry. If we don't get some proper rain at some point over the winter then next year is going to be very difficult, for farmers and gardeners. By the time I reached the Stour valley the radio had moved on to the Today programme, and a politician was explaining how within the next two weeks the European economy could go over the cliff. I suppose it could. The idea seemed to exist in a different world to the one in which clear morning sunlight shone on a high tide in Constable country, and beyond the river reeds and pastures stretched away.
There had been a delivery of shrubs from France since the last time I was at work. The boss has bought plants from this French supplier for all the time I've worked there, including lilacs, some varieties of Philadelphus, and hydrangeas. We don't take many deliveries from them each year, and it did seem as though we had a year's supply of Philadephus 'Buckley's Quill' sitting on the grass at the back of the plant centre. There were some fine chunky Magnolia 'Elizabeth', which is a good yellow flowered variety (though maybe not the best), but alas, the customers we had waiting for them had all either found plants elsewhere in the meantime, or weren't prepared to pay the price of such large specimens. Over sixty pounds for a magnolia is painful.
The wood turner who lives in the village, and makes wooden pepper mills and fruit that we sell in the shop, using wood from the estate, called in to see what extra stock we needed. As we chatted I discovered one of the drawbacks of living in a conservation area with no street lights (on account of the light pollution). The pavement in his street was dug up for work on the gas main, and going out after dark he fell over the barriers around the hole, which were not lit. The gas company say it is not their fault there were no lights, as the council wouldn't permit them. The wood turner is taking Warfarin and so vulnerable to internal injuries such as you get from walking straight into a metal barrier, so he's not at all happy. He was even less happy when his doctor told him that if he developed a headache he should call an ambulance immediately, in case it was an aneurysm. I thought that if the council had really forbidden any lights, even small ones, for an a obstruction on the pavement, then that was a pretty stupid decision. Though I suppose if you know you are at risk from knocks and bumps and you live in a village with no street lights, you might do well to invest in a decent torch.
The wood turner's misfortune reminded me again how quickly life can turn. One minute things are fine, the next, not. A case in point being my hand, still swollen to a shiny potato, though the tide of red seems to have peaked at the first joint of my middle finger and half way down the back of my hand, and is now receding. There has to be something in there, and I keep hoping it will work its way out. I have my eye on a pair of leather pruning gloves, with suede gauntlet cuffs to protect the wrists, which I'd better get and wear when working around roses and other plants with substantial thorns. I was wearing gloves when the accident happened, and trying to be careful, but obviously the gloves were not up to the job and I was not careful enough. I must remember to swap them for normal gloves for fingertip weeding, since expensive leather wears through at the fingertips every bit as quickly as normal rubberised fabric.
Trade seemed quiet, but I learned on getting home that the A14 was horribly blocked due to resurfacing work following an earlier accident, with enormously long tailbacks. If you had been thinking of paying us a visit, and then heard that the A14 was one gigantic traffic jam, you would probably have altered your plans and decided to do something else this afternoon. But who knows? Maybe it is the drought, or the prospect of Europe's economy going off a cliff.
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
what you missed hearing about on Monday
I arrived at work yesterday morning slightly late, because when I looked at my basket of twigs left over from the previous lecture I decided that they were too wilted and shabby to take to Billericay, and had to cut some new ones. The gardeners were waiting for me in the staff room as I walked across the car park, and we went up to the office together. The door was locked. The gardeners said that the manager had the day off for half term, and would not be coming in, which left us unable to get into the office, since none of us have a key. We went and searched the possible cunning hiding places in the staff room, like inside the microwave oven and the cutlery drawer, in case anybody had left us a key, and found one, that turned out not to fit the office door. The older gardener drove around to the owner's mother's house to borrow her key, and twenty minutes after arriving at work we finally managed to get in.
The phone went. It may have been going for the previous twenty minutes, but we couldn't get to it before. It was my colleague's mother to say that she was still unwell. This meant that the plant centre staff were reduced to two, me and the woman who normally works on the other side, who doesn't do telephones.
Then the older gardener said that he couldn't find the van. All of the cars and the horsebox had gone as well, but we presumed that the owners were taking part in some sort of social event requiring transport, rather than that they had just gone out early for the day and then the van thieves had struck. However, the gardener needed the van, because he was due to deliver a large pot to a customer's house at ten, where someone would be waiting to help unload it. I rang the owner who normally deals with staffing issues and got her mobile messaging service, so rang the boss who is the plant supremo and got him. He said that they had the van and it was full of stuff, but we could have it after lunch. I explained about the large pot and the person waiting to help unload, and he said 'Let me think. Think. Think' and told me to call the gamekeeper and ask him to deliver it in his trailer. The gardener and I had just managed to find the gamekeeper's number in the directory on the boss's telephone when the phone rang, and it was the boss saying he had spoken to the gamekeeper, who would be with us in one minute.
The gamekeeper arrived in his open top Land Rover, which was filled with bags of wheat for the pheasants. He and the gardeners took most of the bags out, and lifted the pot in, and off it went, wedged in place with bags of pheasant food. The customer was so happy with the delivery, she sent an e-mail in the afternoon thanking us, so that was all right.
This left me with forty minutes before the nine-thirty deadline for booking in my jukebox parcel with the delivery company, so I rang them up, told them where I worked and explained that I needed a parcel collected, if it wasn’t already booked in. They said no, it wasn’t already booked, and I explained that I didn’t know how to book a parcel and was working off a sheet of printed instructions. The chap at the parcel company was very nice about this, and said the best thing would be for me to fax them the details of where it was going. I had to confess that I didn’t know how to work the fax machine, and read him the details over the phone. He seemed to think that would be fine.
The woman who works on the other side had discovered the bad news from the gardeners, that she would be working in the plant centre, and came and helped with the watering, and the woman who works in the office helped with the telephones, and we managed. The talk in Billericay was fine. Actually they were a nice group, and it was good fun, but in any event standing up and lecturing a room full of strangers for an hour, equipped with a trug of twigs and a digital slide projector (minus any technical support) is positively low stress, compared to being a shop assistant in a small retail business. No contest.
The phone went. It may have been going for the previous twenty minutes, but we couldn't get to it before. It was my colleague's mother to say that she was still unwell. This meant that the plant centre staff were reduced to two, me and the woman who normally works on the other side, who doesn't do telephones.
Then the older gardener said that he couldn't find the van. All of the cars and the horsebox had gone as well, but we presumed that the owners were taking part in some sort of social event requiring transport, rather than that they had just gone out early for the day and then the van thieves had struck. However, the gardener needed the van, because he was due to deliver a large pot to a customer's house at ten, where someone would be waiting to help unload it. I rang the owner who normally deals with staffing issues and got her mobile messaging service, so rang the boss who is the plant supremo and got him. He said that they had the van and it was full of stuff, but we could have it after lunch. I explained about the large pot and the person waiting to help unload, and he said 'Let me think. Think. Think' and told me to call the gamekeeper and ask him to deliver it in his trailer. The gardener and I had just managed to find the gamekeeper's number in the directory on the boss's telephone when the phone rang, and it was the boss saying he had spoken to the gamekeeper, who would be with us in one minute.
The gamekeeper arrived in his open top Land Rover, which was filled with bags of wheat for the pheasants. He and the gardeners took most of the bags out, and lifted the pot in, and off it went, wedged in place with bags of pheasant food. The customer was so happy with the delivery, she sent an e-mail in the afternoon thanking us, so that was all right.
This left me with forty minutes before the nine-thirty deadline for booking in my jukebox parcel with the delivery company, so I rang them up, told them where I worked and explained that I needed a parcel collected, if it wasn’t already booked in. They said no, it wasn’t already booked, and I explained that I didn’t know how to book a parcel and was working off a sheet of printed instructions. The chap at the parcel company was very nice about this, and said the best thing would be for me to fax them the details of where it was going. I had to confess that I didn’t know how to work the fax machine, and read him the details over the phone. He seemed to think that would be fine.
The woman who works on the other side had discovered the bad news from the gardeners, that she would be working in the plant centre, and came and helped with the watering, and the woman who works in the office helped with the telephones, and we managed. The talk in Billericay was fine. Actually they were a nice group, and it was good fun, but in any event standing up and lecturing a room full of strangers for an hour, equipped with a trug of twigs and a digital slide projector (minus any technical support) is positively low stress, compared to being a shop assistant in a small retail business. No contest.
Monday, 10 October 2011
after the party
When I arrived at work my colleagues and the boss were already gathered in the office. As is the British way when something has been a less than resounding success, they were not talking about the open weekend but about ash trees. They hailed me, and asked where the ash tree got its name. I replied that it came from an old northern European language word for spear (hedging my bets as to exactly which language). I looked it up in Archie Miles' book Silva when I got home, and it is Anglo Saxon. Aesc was their word for spear. I retain this nugget because I use it in my woodland talks, but that's the only time I've ever been asked.
My first task, after a little bit of watering in the tunnels, was to make use of the newly tidy greenhouse and turn some pieces of Aeonium given to us by a customer into cuttings. There were three different varieties, one green, one green with pinkish tips and one bronze, rather nice. I've taken them at home with a good strike rate, but never this late in the season. You just cut the rosettes off with some stem, strip off some of the lower leaves, and put them into compost. Around the edges of the pot is advised by some experts because it gives better drainage. I've never used hormone rooting powder on succulents. If they take, I shall ascribe it to my superior propagation technique, while if they fail I shall blame the manager for watering them incorrectly. I made two pots of each, and negotiated to take the remains home to try my luck at rooting the leftovers.
I was assigned for the rest of the day to help the longest standing employee weed the pots of herbaceous plants over on The Other Side. Weeds have germinated at a ferocious rate, which is rather disheartening for her, when she has weeded them all already this season, so recently that she can clearly remember doing it. In an ideal world we wouldn't have pots sitting around for long enough to have time to grow weeds, but it can't be avoided given the range of varieties we offer. They come in at the start of the season, some we pot up ourselves to grow on, and they stay with us until sold. If a designer has specified a dozen of a given plant that can absorb half of our stock for the year in one fell swoop, but we can easily get to October and find we still have several pots left. Weeding is more fun with a bench at the right height to work at, and when I don't have to worry about dropping compost on the gravel, and I charged along at a fine rate. I did end the day with a large black disc of compost on my uniform shirt. The fastest way to clean a pot that is covered in weeds, rather than just having the odd hairy bittercress, is to knock the rootball out of the pot so that you can get your thumbs into the sides just below the surface. The whole weedy top layer then falls away, to be replaced with fresh compost, but to get the old compost to fall straight into a bin I go back to the effective but shirt-destroying technique of resting the rootball against my stomach.
It was due to be a busy week for deliveries, Cambridge this morning, and Norwich on Friday, with less distant places from Tuesday to Thursday. The older gardener who doubles as a delivery driver was despatched with the van, loaded with olive trees, standard bays and phormiums. Mid morning, word came that the fan belt on the van had broken and it was in a service station near the M11. This was not a good start to the gardener's week, or ours, given that we need the business and he was saddled with the task of getting the van repaired. Apparently the customer was extremely cross at the delay and gave the owner a hard time over the phone. By late afternoon we were starting to get worried, given that the gardener is an insulin dependent diabetic, and we feared he set off without his lunch or his insulin, not expecting to be all day. He told us that he had somebody coming to fix the van but not until mid afternoon, and that the battery on his phone was running flat. By close of play he still wasn't back, and we hadn't heard any more. The manager and the owner will see the story through to its conclusion. The rest of us went home, lucky us.
My first task, after a little bit of watering in the tunnels, was to make use of the newly tidy greenhouse and turn some pieces of Aeonium given to us by a customer into cuttings. There were three different varieties, one green, one green with pinkish tips and one bronze, rather nice. I've taken them at home with a good strike rate, but never this late in the season. You just cut the rosettes off with some stem, strip off some of the lower leaves, and put them into compost. Around the edges of the pot is advised by some experts because it gives better drainage. I've never used hormone rooting powder on succulents. If they take, I shall ascribe it to my superior propagation technique, while if they fail I shall blame the manager for watering them incorrectly. I made two pots of each, and negotiated to take the remains home to try my luck at rooting the leftovers.
I was assigned for the rest of the day to help the longest standing employee weed the pots of herbaceous plants over on The Other Side. Weeds have germinated at a ferocious rate, which is rather disheartening for her, when she has weeded them all already this season, so recently that she can clearly remember doing it. In an ideal world we wouldn't have pots sitting around for long enough to have time to grow weeds, but it can't be avoided given the range of varieties we offer. They come in at the start of the season, some we pot up ourselves to grow on, and they stay with us until sold. If a designer has specified a dozen of a given plant that can absorb half of our stock for the year in one fell swoop, but we can easily get to October and find we still have several pots left. Weeding is more fun with a bench at the right height to work at, and when I don't have to worry about dropping compost on the gravel, and I charged along at a fine rate. I did end the day with a large black disc of compost on my uniform shirt. The fastest way to clean a pot that is covered in weeds, rather than just having the odd hairy bittercress, is to knock the rootball out of the pot so that you can get your thumbs into the sides just below the surface. The whole weedy top layer then falls away, to be replaced with fresh compost, but to get the old compost to fall straight into a bin I go back to the effective but shirt-destroying technique of resting the rootball against my stomach.
It was due to be a busy week for deliveries, Cambridge this morning, and Norwich on Friday, with less distant places from Tuesday to Thursday. The older gardener who doubles as a delivery driver was despatched with the van, loaded with olive trees, standard bays and phormiums. Mid morning, word came that the fan belt on the van had broken and it was in a service station near the M11. This was not a good start to the gardener's week, or ours, given that we need the business and he was saddled with the task of getting the van repaired. Apparently the customer was extremely cross at the delay and gave the owner a hard time over the phone. By late afternoon we were starting to get worried, given that the gardener is an insulin dependent diabetic, and we feared he set off without his lunch or his insulin, not expecting to be all day. He told us that he had somebody coming to fix the van but not until mid afternoon, and that the battery on his phone was running flat. By close of play he still wasn't back, and we hadn't heard any more. The manager and the owner will see the story through to its conclusion. The rest of us went home, lucky us.
Monday, 19 September 2011
stocking up for autumn
Stock is now arriving in the plant centre in quantity, ready for the autumn selling season. I hope we do sell it. The manager ran a stand for us yesterday at the Helmingham Hall rare plant fair, and trade was slack. Everybody seems to have had a bad year, so our sales weren't helped by the fact that other stallholders were knocking out plants (by now potbound) at massive discounts to avoid being left with them over the winter.
A delivery of shrubs came in some time last week, while I wasn't there. Some of these were lined up in confusing trolley loads behind the shop, the same variety split between more than one trolley but not yet carrying our labels with price, description, and most crucially, name. The grower just sends them out in batches with a single label to cover all ten or twenty plants of each variety, and it is a very good idea to keep them in their groups and not muddle them up until you've tagged them. Some of the plants were intended to go out for sale straight away, and others to be stored behind the scenes in the tunnel on the other side, to replenish stock in the plant centre as needed over the coming months. It wasn't clear to me which were which, and it didn't seem to have been clear to the staff working over the weekend either. The manager startled me with a howl of rage as I was watering in one of the tunnels, which initially made me think that maybe he wanted the abutilons and Lobelia tupa to be really dry and that it was my mistake to have watered them, but it turned out that they were not supposed to be in that tunnel at all.
The boss is in the process of buying a new tractor. I thought this was quite an encouraging sign, but it turned out that his hand was forced, because the old tractor had begun to give off such copious amounts of smoke that it was unusable. This may have had something to do with our attempts to run it on paraffin (left over from the old tunnel heater) instead of diesel. There again, it was a very old tractor. The proposed new model was delivered for the gardeners to inspect, and they looked as engrossed as you would expect two blokes to be, given the prospect of a shiny new mechanical toy.
While the gardeners and the boss were putting the potential new tractor through its paces, an articulated lorry-load of trees arrived. We ask our suppliers not to send artics, since they won't go up the drive, but I expect that an artic is all some of them have. This one had to park out on the road, and the boss refused to interupt the tractor trials so that the gardeners could help unload the trees, so the rest of us had to plod up and down the drive with trolleys out of the garden centre, six trees at a time. The driver must have thought that we were taking the piss. Eventually the gardeners came to help with a big trailer, and things speeded up. Our most long-standing employee came to help, who works part time behind the scenes potting and weeding, but the manager's self-appointed guardian told her that we could manage without her, and that it got confusing with too many people. The longest-serving member of staff said that the manager had told her to come over, but that she would go back to her proper work, and retreated fuming to the polytunnel.
We were one member of staff down, due to illness, and so after the excitement of the trees I found myself largely confined to the shop. Occassionally the manager would suggest I could move trolleys of this and that, but customers can get into the shop and feel as though they have been unattended for a very long time in less than the time it takes to unload a trolley of plants, so that isn't a very easy piece of multi-tasking to pull off. I did manage to make some phone calls to let people know that their stuff had arrived. Sometimes I just got their anwerphone, but one woman sounded really pleased.
The extra-tender and extra-beautiful 'Azureum' form of Teucrium fruticans had come in since the last time I was at work, so I put one aside with my name on it, to go in our turning circle in due course. No ginger scented rosemary yet, but I live in hope. I was tempted by a rather tender species of buddleia, B. crispa, with lovely rounded felty leaves, but I'll ponder that before committing. I do have a collection of plants waiting to go in the ground, and am trying to deal with them before buying too many more. It is easy to be tempted when rarities turn up, though, since if I don't grab my chance I might not get another for a year, if not longer. I still wish I'd bought a plant of a particularly long-flowering white Weigela I'd had my eye on, before the grower supplying us and the liner nursery supplying them both ceased trading. I've never seen one since.
At home the Systems Administrator had the sad task of disposing of the body of the old lady hen, who took bad yesterday and died in the night. She was pretty old, for a chicken. I think we got her in 2005, and she lived through a fox attack and was a feisty creature in her day. In recent months she had got reluctant to venture out of the run, though she did come out for a nice walk about on Friday afternoon, and we guessed her time was drawing to a close. It is sad to see her go, when we had known her for so long, but maybe less sad than when young hens fall prey to the fox. Chickens seem a bit like fighter pilots. If they survive the first few weeks of conflict their chances of survival rise considerably.
A delivery of shrubs came in some time last week, while I wasn't there. Some of these were lined up in confusing trolley loads behind the shop, the same variety split between more than one trolley but not yet carrying our labels with price, description, and most crucially, name. The grower just sends them out in batches with a single label to cover all ten or twenty plants of each variety, and it is a very good idea to keep them in their groups and not muddle them up until you've tagged them. Some of the plants were intended to go out for sale straight away, and others to be stored behind the scenes in the tunnel on the other side, to replenish stock in the plant centre as needed over the coming months. It wasn't clear to me which were which, and it didn't seem to have been clear to the staff working over the weekend either. The manager startled me with a howl of rage as I was watering in one of the tunnels, which initially made me think that maybe he wanted the abutilons and Lobelia tupa to be really dry and that it was my mistake to have watered them, but it turned out that they were not supposed to be in that tunnel at all.
The boss is in the process of buying a new tractor. I thought this was quite an encouraging sign, but it turned out that his hand was forced, because the old tractor had begun to give off such copious amounts of smoke that it was unusable. This may have had something to do with our attempts to run it on paraffin (left over from the old tunnel heater) instead of diesel. There again, it was a very old tractor. The proposed new model was delivered for the gardeners to inspect, and they looked as engrossed as you would expect two blokes to be, given the prospect of a shiny new mechanical toy.
While the gardeners and the boss were putting the potential new tractor through its paces, an articulated lorry-load of trees arrived. We ask our suppliers not to send artics, since they won't go up the drive, but I expect that an artic is all some of them have. This one had to park out on the road, and the boss refused to interupt the tractor trials so that the gardeners could help unload the trees, so the rest of us had to plod up and down the drive with trolleys out of the garden centre, six trees at a time. The driver must have thought that we were taking the piss. Eventually the gardeners came to help with a big trailer, and things speeded up. Our most long-standing employee came to help, who works part time behind the scenes potting and weeding, but the manager's self-appointed guardian told her that we could manage without her, and that it got confusing with too many people. The longest-serving member of staff said that the manager had told her to come over, but that she would go back to her proper work, and retreated fuming to the polytunnel.
We were one member of staff down, due to illness, and so after the excitement of the trees I found myself largely confined to the shop. Occassionally the manager would suggest I could move trolleys of this and that, but customers can get into the shop and feel as though they have been unattended for a very long time in less than the time it takes to unload a trolley of plants, so that isn't a very easy piece of multi-tasking to pull off. I did manage to make some phone calls to let people know that their stuff had arrived. Sometimes I just got their anwerphone, but one woman sounded really pleased.
The extra-tender and extra-beautiful 'Azureum' form of Teucrium fruticans had come in since the last time I was at work, so I put one aside with my name on it, to go in our turning circle in due course. No ginger scented rosemary yet, but I live in hope. I was tempted by a rather tender species of buddleia, B. crispa, with lovely rounded felty leaves, but I'll ponder that before committing. I do have a collection of plants waiting to go in the ground, and am trying to deal with them before buying too many more. It is easy to be tempted when rarities turn up, though, since if I don't grab my chance I might not get another for a year, if not longer. I still wish I'd bought a plant of a particularly long-flowering white Weigela I'd had my eye on, before the grower supplying us and the liner nursery supplying them both ceased trading. I've never seen one since.
At home the Systems Administrator had the sad task of disposing of the body of the old lady hen, who took bad yesterday and died in the night. She was pretty old, for a chicken. I think we got her in 2005, and she lived through a fox attack and was a feisty creature in her day. In recent months she had got reluctant to venture out of the run, though she did come out for a nice walk about on Friday afternoon, and we guessed her time was drawing to a close. It is sad to see her go, when we had known her for so long, but maybe less sad than when young hens fall prey to the fox. Chickens seem a bit like fighter pilots. If they survive the first few weeks of conflict their chances of survival rise considerably.
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