catching up with myself

 One of the neighbours called round on Monday, when I was at work, and spoke to the Systems Administrator to ask if we'd heard about the lettuce farm's planning application.  The copy of the letter she gave us was rather unnerving, since the application is for permission to erect polytunnels 6.4m high and up to 360m long, covering five fields, and construct two agricultural reservoirs, and the letter talked about how the development would 'dramatically change the present countryside landscape and impact on the local wildlife, volume of highway traffic as well as devaluing local properties'.  I was out on Monday evening, and the SA didn't look up details of the application in my absence.  I told myself that the farmer had been pretty sensible about community relations so far, and with the whole farm to choose from probably wouldn't try and stick the tunnels immediately next to houses, but it niggled at me at odd moments yesterday as a vague, overhanging threat.  This morning the SA looked up the full details on the web, and the proposed site of the tunnels is on the far side of the farm, well away from houses, while the planned reservoirs are due to be on the site of previous worked-out gravel extractions.

The news came as a relief.  Even though my rational mind thought that the developments were unlikely to take in the next door field, anxiety still lurked.  It's tricky living in the countryside.  You know that you don't own the view, and that fields are a working environment in which farmers have to make a living, but you still don't want rows of plastic tunnels over six metres high just over the hedge from your garden, just as you understand that farmers in the eastern counties need to store more winter rain for summer use, but don't want to listen to the noise of diggers and especially those wretched reversing bleepers for the year it takes them to excavate the reservoir.  The planning application has to make the commercial case for the development, and so we discovered that the farm plans to invest £9 million, and that the development will create six full time jobs.  That's £1.5 million capital spend per job created, so I think we can conclude that horticultural food production is not going to lead the UK out of its present unemployment problems.  The tunnels are intended to grow some kind of salad leaf used in supermarket bags of mixed leaves, which is currently imported to the UK, so the project will help the balance of trade, if it goes ahead.  Remember, the next time you buy a bag of mixed leaves or a supermarket lettuce, that the fields of north Essex are disappearing under fleece and polythene tunnels so that you can get one of your five a day.

Meanwhile I made some progress with my (rather long) list of things to do.  A fellow beekeeper is producing a leaflet for our stand at the Tendring Show (it is a lovely show.  Do come) and had circulated draft versions for constructive comment.  I fired off my first set of comments ages ago, and was disconcerted on getting back from work on Sunday to find myself being chased for comments on the next version when I'd only been sitting on it for a week, given the show isn't until the middle of July.  What with work, and Monday night's concert, and the Chelsea Flower Show, I had to confess that there was no way I was going to even look at it until today.  I sat down after breakfast to go through it, and was greatly relieved to send off my latest list of constructive comments and be able to tick Beekeeper's leaflet off my list of things to do.

Then I was able to have a look at the bees, since it has finally warmed up.  They like the warm weather, and all four colonies were in a benign and docile mood, while a problem a couple have been having with a fungal infection of their larvae, called chalk brood, was much reduced.  I was hoping that warmer and drier weather would do the trick, once the bees could fly freely instead of being stuck on top of each other in the hives.  One colony that was so slow to get going earlier in the year that I initially thought they must have gone queenless has increased greatly since the last inspection, and was starting to show signs of swarming.  I added a super (extra box) to give them more space, removed the incipient new queens, and crossed my fingers.  The tiny swarm I collected last year that made it through the winter, in defiance of what the text books say about the minimum colony size for successful overwintering, is building up as well.  I'm not sure what the other two colonies are doing, after my unsuccessful attempts at swarm control, but the bees seemed contented and purposeful, so I shall leave them to get on with it.  They have millions of years of evolution behind them in how to be a bee, whereas I have 13 year's experience in how to manage a bee, so when in doubt I take the view that they know better than I do.

Then I made it through my monthly Pilates lesson without disgracing myself.  By next month things should be less frantic, and we might progress to some new exercises and challenges, which would make it more interesting for both of us.  My life recently has felt like the proverbial paddling swan, legs going frantically even if the surface seems serene, though in truth it is probably more like a small dog doing the doggy paddle, little legs churning while the whole dog looks pretty worried.

Addendum  The Telegraph reports that the Shard doesn't make it into the world's top ten tall buildings, even at full height.  It would need to be another 460 feet tall.  Oh well.

moving a million pots

Season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and bonfires.  The gardener at work had a bonfire, that put smudges of ash over my car.  He said it put them on his car as well, and I dare say they'll wash off when it rains.

I moved a lot of pots today.  Really a lot of pots.  I haven't even begun to work out how much they must have weighed in aggregate, but many times my own body weight in compost.  First of all I transferred the magnolias from the edge of the tunnel, where they are next to the polythene and could get too cold in a harsh winter, to the aisle down the middle of the tunnel.  That was OK.  I read some of the labels as I went along, to try and learn something, and left gaps in what I hoped were sensible places for new stock arriving over the winter.  I like the sound of 'Piroutette', which only grows to 3m and has large white flowers, according to the boss's description.

Then I moved the bamboos in from outside.  They stayed out last winter, and suffered badly, so this year they're coming in.  To save space in the tunnel in the plant centre, only three specimens maximum of each variety went in there, and any surplus was wheeled over to the Other Side.  I brushed the dead leaves off each pot, and as I stood with 10L pots of giant grasses balanced against my stomach with one hand, while dusting down the surface of the compost with the other, I began to think I should have been on that manual lifting course.  I'm not good at bamboo nomenclature, not helped by the fact that it has kept changing throughout my gardening life, and getting the bamboos in strict alphabetical order took serious concentration.  Overflow plants that wouldn't fit inside the shade structure with the rest of the bamboos during the summer had been put down around the outside of the shade tunnel in no particular order, making the exercise into a strange bamboo mail-merge.

I gather the lifting course consisted of being told to think before lifting anything heavy or awkward in case there was a better way of managing it, avoid twisting, ask for help if needed, keep your back straight etc, but not much actual supervised practice lifting, so maybe I didn't miss much.  I know the theory already.  The trick is to realise when you are twisting, using your back more than you should, and so on.  In my Pilates lessons I am forever being told I have made some movement or adopted a posture I wasn't aware of, and that's before I've got several kilos of bamboo rootball balanced on my stomach while the topgrowth tries to poke me in the eye.

Two gardeners from one of the UK's grandest stately homes (well, Chatsworth, actually) came to collect some shrubs they'd reserved, and choose some other things while they were at it.  They asked advice on the hardiness of Olearia, and mentioned a glasshouse, so I asked hopefully if they might like a 4m tall Norfolk Island Pine, but they said they had one already, that someone had given them and that had outgrown its space, and they couldn't work out what to do with their's either, as it was now too large.  The (I presume) head gardener had overwintered Norfolk Island Pine outside in Cornwall, where it had survived, while not being very happy, but he didn't hold out any hope for Derbyshire, or Essex.

The manager was disconcerted recently to be asked by a customer why we had so little stock, and whether we were closing down, so I was tasked with composing a notice explaining that a lot of shrubs had been moved into the tunnels for the winter, and why.  I came up with something suitable, which the woman who works in the office typed and laminated, and the gardener managed to find the notice boards on stakes we use for open days, and put the notices by the entrance to the plant centre.  It is because roots in a pot are more likely to freeze than if they are in the ground, which disagrees with some plants, especially evergreens that go on losing water through their leaves regardless.  Also because compost in pots can get sopping wet, causing the roots of some species to rot.  I added words of reassurance about how most of the plants would be fine outdoors in winter once they were planted in the ground, not a pot, and how customers in doubt about the hardiness of any plant could ask a member of staff.  The real mystery, which I would love to know the answer to, is why we leave Sarcocca and Skimmia outside, and they are mostly OK, when we bring in Ilex aquifolium and Viburnum tinus.

not according to plan

Now that it's March our working day starts at 8.00am instead of a quarter past.  I've moved the alarm clock a quarter of an hour earlier, but it takes a bit of getting used to.  By now I've got a set of timings for the point at which I need to stop doing whatever else I'm doing and start making my packed lunch, the time by which I need to start eating breakfast, the latest possible time at which it's worth starting a second mug of tea, the time by which I need to have finished breakfast and reading newspapers on-line and start cleaning my teeth, and the time to leave the house.  The journey to work is calibrated against the stages of the Today programme.  If I haven't got to Little Bromley by the time Thought for the Day starts that's bad.  And now all those timings are wrong and have to be relearnt, until the clocks change in the autumn and we revert to the winter 8.15am start.  We're finishing later too, 5.00pm instead of 4.15pm as of last month, and come April it will be a six o'clock finish.

A lorry arrived with various bits and pieces for the shop, and the driver, looking worried, disappeared under the cab, muttering about only having braking action on one side.  When he started the engine up again and depressed the brake pedal, a jet of liquid shot out of the front off-side brakes.  He made telephone calls and sat in his cab, looking resigned.  That was a rubbish start to his week.  Eventually a commercial-vehicle-roadside-recovery van appeared, and the engineer confirmed that whatever bit it was of the brakes had failed.  He could get the component, but didn't carry it with him.  The lorry was still there mid-afternoon, but by close of play had managed to get away.  I suppose breaking down in a quiet garden is better than by the side of the A12.

Last weekend a customer appeared at the till with a severely nibbled clematis.  At the time I couldn't think what might have done it, my mind running upon muntjac and it seeming unlikely that we'd had one of those in a polytunnel inside the plant centre.  Today we discovered the culprit, an enormous mouse (or vole).  It was running around inside the tunnel cover, having managed to get between two layers of polythene, but it made its escape before we could work out how to catch it.  Over the weekend it (or its friends and relations) had stripped almost all the leaves off a dozen Clianthus.  Before shutting the tunnel up tonight the manager set up a fearsome array of mousetraps.

(Folk music must be getting trendy.  Our plan to go and hear Cara Dillon at the Colchester Arts Centre has been scuppered by the fact that it is sold out.  At least I looked at the website before driving into Colchester, but I feel rather a prune.  Apart from Martin Carthy and Fairport Convention folk concerts are never sold out.  We had better bother to book in advance for Spiers and Boden.)

growing under cover

Overwintering plants in a polytunnel is always tricky.  Their demand for water falls right off so you must cut down on watering, but they still need some.  There's always the chance of finding one or two that have dried out too far, especially in a crowded tunnel where they are all crammed in together.  Some will not recover from this state of affairs, for example, Callistemon.  Once their leaves have gone brown and crispy from drought in their plastic pots they've had it (although Callistemon in the garden that have been cut to the ground by winter cold may shoot again from below ground).  Overwatering is equally damaging, rotting roots and setting up the conditions for botrytis to take hold on leaves and stems.  Tender salvias are among the worst: they'll break out in botrytis at the least opportunity.

I spent a peaceful day at work clearing fallen and dead leaves out of the heated tunnel, and indulging my ancient monkey grooming instincts picking dead and damaged leaves off the plants.  It's not a bad place to be on a winter's day, getting some fresh air but out of the wind (which was lively), up close and personal with the plants.  Aromatic shrubs are a particular pleasure, giving off great wafts of scent as you touch them:  lemon from Aloysia triphylla, a ginger-cum-rosemary flavour off Rosmarinus officinalis 'Green Ginger' and a strange mixture of lavender and sage from Salvia lavandulifolia.  I mused on how I could plant all of them, plus the lovely but ever-so-tender Teucrium fruticans 'Azureum', to replace a large patch of curry plant that I am tired of.  It is getting straggly and I don't even like the smell, which always makes me think I must need to clean the chickens out.  More prosaically I thought that I must pay the same attention to my own conservatory as soon as possible.