A new home for our old pots

As a purveyor of plant displays on a rental basis (and also a bunch of compulsive hoarders), we have a large stock of ex-rental pots in storage. I would estimate 4-500 in total!

There is a purpose to this hoarding, as they can be resprayed and reused if a new order for the same pot comes in, as they are as good as new when resprayed.

However, the bit of polytunnel in which they were stored was required by our sister nursery to expand their growing capacity, so we were asked to move all our pots to a new one they find less conducive to growing plants. All fine, except it took two of us a couple of days in all to move them all over (as the two polytunnels were a van drive apart).

This did provide me a golden opportunity to pander to my OCD by putting all the different pot ranges in nice neat lines. There are many different types and sizes of pot, some more or less indistinguishable; I hope I've rendered myself redundancy-proof by being the only person at Stewarts that can tell them all apart.

I was trying to instruct my helper Claire on the subtleties of design that differentiate a Kubis from a Cubis, a Smooth Cubis (old), a Smooth Cubis (new), or indeed a Bajazi, all of which look very similar to the layman. But I think she just thought I was making it up.

Then I started explaining the differences between Penangs, Malays, Zeniths and Bedouins, which also all look the same. I'm surprised she didn't leave me to move them on my own...

Jonathan

A dog is for Christmas...

Now the Christmas Tree rush is over, I thought I'd share this funny little incident that occurred when we were erecting the last tree at a retirement home in Bournemouth.

Being a friendly sort of retirement home
they have a cat and a dog for the residents' pleasure. You would expect the dog to be a peaceable kind of animal under the circumstances, and this first photo seems to show we got off to a good start....





...but before long he wanted to start playing tug.

With my hand.

Luckily as the owner of a Bulldog I am used to teeth marks on my hands...



...but the final straw was when he decided to steal one of Debra's gloves.

Debra is not only quite fond of her gloves, but she's also really not a dog person.

As any student of body language will be able to tell from this picture.



Odd isn't it? Every year we sit down before the busy Christmas Tree period and try and make contingencies for what might happen (rush of late orders/bad weather/etc.), but "spaniel stealing glove" didn't feature in that list.

Christmas trees all delivered

Another Christmas Tree delivery period successfully completed. Having expected (what with the recession and all) that we would be having a quiet year, we didn't expect to have one of our busiest years yet. Seventy trees, and almost all delivered by Debra the Christmas co-ordinator and me!

Here's some statistics:

- A total of 520 feet in height of trees

- Of which 300 feet were decorated

- 1000 miles of driving to deliver them

- I estimate 4 barrels of biscuits, 5 chocolate bars and 70 cups of coffee.

The tree on the right is a large tree in blue and silver decorations that we thought looked particularly good.

I also thought I'd add some pics of the gestation of the biggest (18 foot) tree that we do:

First, the ever dignified Derek making a bow tie of a bow, not knowing Becca is adding her own contribution to the photo:

Becca was obviously in a festive mood, as she decided to decorate the safety cones we position round our work area:

Because this tree is larger than our biggest ladders, we actually have to decorate the top third while it's still on its side. It takes Debra's (working on tree) great decoration skills to know how to decorate a tree before she knows how it's going to hang once upright:

By the way, is it my imagination, or is Claire (red hair) checking Derek's manly frame out in the background?

Finally, the finished product, with from left to right: Claire, Derek, me and Debra.

If you're wondering whether I'm going to do a sales pitch for Christmas Trees, you've missed your chance this year, but for next year, please contact us next Autumn. Do not leave it until December, as it turns out we get very busy!

Jonathan