day one of open weekend

Today was day one of the Open Weekend at work.  I've always found it a slightly odd phrase, given that we are a shop and are Open seven days a week, apart from Christmas bank holidays and Easter Sunday.  My colleagues had got the place looking very nice, and I was impressed, given how windy it was last week, and how much of a mess strong winds make when you have pots of plants everywhere.  At least today was relatively calm, but it was grey and cold, and drizzled from mid afternoon onwards.  Not the sort of weather to make people think that what they really wanted to do was walk around slowly outside buying some plants, and maybe sit through a lecture or two in an unheated polytunnel.

The manager gave a talk about pruning, which was very well attended.  The audience looked a bit chilly by the time he'd finished, but they said they enjoyed it.  Then the manager and the boss talked about ornamental autumn fruits, illustrated with lots of samples of berries gathered from the arboretum.  There were Sorbus, and crab  apples, Cotoneaster, Berberis, and a strange red magnolia fruit that looked like something the cat might have sicked up.  More of a talking point than a thing of beauty, the magnolia seed pod.  That was very well attended as well, and they had to take extra chairs into the polytunnel.  Then the boss gave guided tour of the garden, which lasted for two hours, and those who stayed with him to the end must have truly deserved a cup of tea.  The talks and the guided walk were free, but people visiting the garden under their own steam and not on the walk had to buy a garden ticket at the normal price.  I really can't work that one out at all.  The tea and cake were not free, but you got twice as much cake for less money than the National Trust charges at Flatford.  Staff were given cake, and my piece was so enormous that it did me for lunch and tea.

My role in all of this was largely to operate the till, but occassionally customers wanted some gardening advice, which made it a bit more interesting.  Also keeping me on my toes was the October offer of a 15% reduction on clematis and herbaceous plants (as a lure to customers and because we don't want to carry large stocks through the winter) but not anything else.  The tills don't do 15% discounts automatically, so that called for a calculator and an organised approach to the order in which items went through the till (discountable items first, subtotal, work out the discount, then all other items).  In the quiet spells during the talks I got to stick prices on some coloured string.  Interesting that the twine and sundries business we deal with is still based in Dundee, a survivor of the traditional Scottish jute industry.  I can recommend coloured raffia, which helps make all sorts of presents and bunches of home grown flowers and produce look more jazzy.  Magenta raffia round a bunch of rhubarb, there's a combination.

A former colleague called in on a mission, which was to deliver some smoked salmon for the owner's mother.  I knew him via beekeeping, and he stopped working there shortly before I applied for a job.  In fact, it was him who introduced me to the plant centre, initially as a customer.  Nowadays he runs a successful pub and as a sideline operates a smokehouse, hence the salmon.

The day's takings at the end of all this effort were not especially impressive, but I think the weather was against us.  Tomorrow everybody has to do their talks and walks all over again.  The weather is forecast to be much warmer, so nil desperandum.

investing through the downturn

Apparently the boss was on the radio just before seven this morning, talking about the problems the dry weather is causing for trees and shrubs, not to mention plant centres.  That was presumably Radio Suffolk.  I didn't hear it, but the interview was shorter than the boss was expecting, so the plant centre didn't get quite such a plug as he'd been planning, with no time to mention the forthcoming open weekend.

The open weekend is an annual jamboree, with talks, guided garden walks and cake.  It is now only five days away, and so we are all tidying frantically.  By an irritating twist of fate, one of the gardeners has to go on jury service, starting tomorrow.  There's probably never a convenient time for a small business to lose a member of staff, but this week is even less convenient than most.

The start of the jury service was delayed by one day, for some reason, so the gardener was at work today to share in the excitement of the new tractor being delivered.  I gather it will do all sorts of things that the old tractor couldn't do, as well as not produce gargantuan quantities of black smoke.  I find it quite encouraging that the boss feels able and willing to invest a new bit of kit.  Not only the tractor, but the front wall that was threatening to collapse on to the pavement has been rebuilt (I think the council did have something to do with that, as they don't like collapsing brick walls along the public highway).  And it turns out we are going to recruit a new full time member of staff.  This is probably a good thing, as we are permanently one person short at weekends, and covering for any illness or holiday at all depends on a constant flow of goodwill (plus availability given other commitments) from everybody.  And we are going to have a tearoom.

Words almost fail me about the tearoom.  All the staff have been telling the owners for ages that we need a tearoom.  Potential visitors ring and ask if we have one, and actual customers express disappointment that we haven't.  I've thought that given the cost and effort that goes into presentation in the plant centre, and the fact that we have a garden open to the public, we are pitching ourselves as a destination, attraction, day out, whatever you want to call it, not just a shop where you can buy a lot of plants.  And English people expect tea and cake on their days out.  Bill Bryson has identified this as an endearing characteristic of ours, that a cup of tea and some cake (or even a biscuit) makes us so happy, and he is right.  You can't be a proper destination without a tea room.  What swung it, according to the manager, was that when the HTA came the other week to do their co-operative critique of the business, they all said very loud and extremely clear that we NEED A TEAROOM.  Never mind the display tables, they're very nice, but what about the TEAROOM?  The owners are going to chisel a piece out of the back of the shop to make room for it, and keep it simple.  Tea and cake.  Maybe soup.  I think they should have soup, or jacket potatoes.  Not everybody likes sweet stuff.  Before I get too excited about the tearoom I should remember the new plant catalogue and the garden guide, both of which have been promised but on hold for an age.  But a builder did actually come and look at the shop today.  And the tractor and the wall are facts.  I have seen them.