stock taking, bulbs and shopping

On the Radio 4 farming programme this morning there was talk of how the mild winter has led the UK population of rats and mice to explode, so I am not alone with my rodent problem.  On farms they gather around grain stores.  Even if they are kept out of the actual store, it's getting to the point where the risk of treading droppings inside on their shoes is an issue for some farmers.  Rabbit numbers have soared nationally too, which fits with the Systems Administrator's warning to me last night that they are coming into the meadow again.

The new chap has started at work.  Today was the end of his first week, and he still seems enthusiastic.  Even having begun with us during the stock take (easily the most tedious task of the entire working year) has not put him off, as he said that it was a good opportunity to discover where things were.  With a positive attitude like that he will go far.

So many stock categories have now been stock-taken that the only thing to do is to write down everything that we sell, while apologising to the customers for the delay at the till.  Fortunately everyone today was very relaxed about it.  I was briefly dispatched with the new chap to stock take some pots, but as we couldn't find the first pots we looked at anywhere on the system, either by description or by price, we decided we'd have to leave that section until the manager was around.  We did manage to do the faux oriental terracotta lanterns and hollow clay balls with stars cut out, and my colleagues finished the shrubs while I minded the till.

My task for the day was to put a fresh delivery of bulbs out for sale.  This entailed getting the stand for them out of the back of the tractor shed, where it had been stowed right at the very back behind a table, some scaffolding, a broken chair, assorted planks of wood and other Stuff.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and it is in the nature of sheds to attract Stuff.  This one is full of it, with just enough space for the tractor.  A half full stand of bulbs looks miserable, so I consolidated the new delivery with some odd lilies and gladioli that were on the seed potato and onion rack, and spread the latter out to fill the gaps.  The stand itself was slightly alarmingly wobbly, and I propped it up from behind with a galvanised incinerator and a box of plastic plant ties, just in case.

The new bulbs included Galtonia candicans, a tall growing, summer flowering species with white flowers like little bells up stout spikes.  Its common name according to the packet is summer flowering hyacinth, though if you ever want any you'd do better to stick to Galtonia.  It appeared on Gardeners' World last year, and I remembered that following the programme someone had wanted some, and left their details, so I rang him and left a message to say that Galtonia were now in.  He came to get some later in the day, and thanked me profusely for ringing, which was nice of him, so I gave some cultural advice free and gratis, which is that the plant is said to like to see the light, so despite the height of the flower spike it's happier at the front of the border than tucked away at the back among lots of other foliage.  He said he had just the spot for it, and went away happy.

I went away happy too, having succumbed to the beauty of 'Livia' (I thought I would, assuming there were any left) and while I was at it picked up a couple of rare, not too big shrubs to tuck in by the new Enkianthus, as I got the Rosa rugosa stump out yesterday so that bit of the sloping bed is nearly ready for replanting.  One was Mahonia gracilipes, a late summer or autumn flowering charmer with purplish red (not yellow) flowers and chalky white undersides to its (more typically Mahonia like) pinnate leaves.  It is a Roy Lancaster introduction to western gardens.  The other was a female variety of Skimmia called 'Wakehurst White' with white berries and dainty clusters of white, scented flowers.  Also a small leaved myrtle, Myrtus communis 'Tarrentina' for the gravel, since last season we ran out for most of the year.  Apart from the Hamamelis x intermedia 'Livia' these are all staying in my greenhouse for another month, until February's weather is safely out of the way.

parking, mousetraps and worm pills

Arriving at work I remembered to park my car as bait in the middle of the car park, to give customers a clue as to where they should park.  The car park is covered in gravel, which is picturesque and cheap, but means we can't mark out parking spaces.  You would think it was fairly obvious that, once the row of cars along the edge of the car park nearest to the entrance was full, you should start a second row parallel to the first row, but it turns out it's not.  Our customers are masters of free-form parking, and will start new rows at right angles to the first line of cars, given half a chance.  (Tarmac is useful, but not lovely.  In my long-distant student days the college authorities, for reasons best known to themselves, elected to resurface the garden quad with black tarmac instead of gravel one vacation.  The result looked about as dreadful as you would expect, and a short while later during the night a zebra crossing was painted across the full width of the quadrangle.  The next vacation the tarmac disappeared again).

One of the manager's row of mousetraps contained a very dead squashed mouse.  I didn't know how to open the thing, and didn't honestly care to fiddle with it, so I removed the trap, mouse and all, for him to deal with tomorrow, and put it in the border outside the tunnel.  While I was at it I covered the corpses of his two previous victims with leaves, as I didn't think the sight of a growing pile of dead mice raised the tone of the establishment.

I called more people to tell them their (sometimes long awaited and maybe no longer wanted) plants had arrived.  One man I spoke to said he would just need to consult his wife, and I think he meant it, but another customer's 'I'll have to tell my husband' sounded rather like a version of the 'I'll see what your father says when he gets home' gambit for fobbing off small children.

When I came downstairs this morning I found a pile of cat sick at the bottom of the stairs.  I knew the cats needed worming, and had even got as far as buying the worm pills.  As my life's partner is about to disappear to Cheltenham for the week I thought we'd better do the deed tonight.  It's probably not ideal, for those looking to keep the sparkle in their relationship alive after nearly thirty years, to announce as they get in through the front door on coming home from work that we have to worm the cats, now.  (Our vet taught us a very useful trick.  Get a 5ml blunt ended plastic syringe, and fill it with water.  After popping the pill, syringe water into the cat's mouth.  It has to swallow, and this is much easier for both parties than the traditional technique of massaging the creature's throat for ten minutes while you implore it to swallow, and it rolls the pill to the corner of its mouth ready to spit it out when you finally let go.  Don't squeeze too hard on the syringe, or you will end up waterboarding your pet).

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.)

failure of the rodent operatives

Something has been eating the crocus bulbs in the bed by the ditch.  When I was weeding there (mostly pulling out goose grass seedlings, which come up as thick as a box of supermarket cress at this time of the year) I found their poor stalks, severed and discarded.  I presume it is mice, or voles, or some sort of wretched rodent, and feel slightly aggrieved that, given we are over-run with cats and owls, something couldn't try a bit harder to keep the rodents under control.

The cats don't do rodent control.  Once it gets dark and cold and we light the stove they lie in front of that, or within a three metre radius of it, thank you very much.  The only cat that patrols the garden properly is Black and White Alsatian Killer Cat.  He is a short haired, short legged black and white creature that got his name because early in our acquaintance he jumped up and snapped at my forearm like a police dog.  I was wearing a heavy coat at the time, and didn't pay undue attention.  Then he started coming into the house, and after he had bitten both of us (he got me on the wrist and I spent a week on antibiotics and it took a couple of months to regain normal sensation in one finger) he was evicted from the house.  Then we discovered he was nominally the neighbours' cat, and had his own bed and a name and everything.  We explained that we had enough cats of our own already, besides which he was a biter.  Nowadays we have reached an understanding.  Black and White Alsatian Killer spends a lot of his time slinking around our garden and sitting in the borders.  We don't try to touch him, and he doesn't try to bite us, just gives us an enigmatic but vaguely unpleasant glance as he passes.  Sometimes he comes and sits and stares in through the veranda window, like the evil manservant Quint.  Our neighbours don't mind not seeing so much of their pet now that they have discovered he hates both of them, and only likes their daughter-in-law.

mouse attack

Going out to my greenhouse to check the watering I found that mice had been on the attack, eating the leaves off emerging Scilla siberica that were growing on in pots.  This is extremely dull of them.  I went to the shed in search of rodenticide and found that something had eaten the bait stored away on a shelf straight out of the packet.  I don't like using poison, but don't get on with mechanical traps.  We had an infestation of rats under the shed a while back, and they used to take the bait from the trap without triggering it, while I nearly lost my fingers a couple of times setting it.  Poison used strictly in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions seems the least bad option.

Rodents in greenhouses can be a serious nuisance.  They finished off two successive sowings of broad beans a couple of years ago in the little greenhouse, but this is the first time I've had problems with them in the main one.  I don't know that they particularly like Scilla.  It looks more as though they are starting at one end and working their way along.  Luckily they haven't got to the Fritillaria persica 'Ivory Bells' yet.