10/11-4-17 – Flower Talk

10-4-17 Monday

Spent a lot of time dealing with old clematis stock today. This happened whilst my manager was busy pulling her hair out wondering where our big delivery from Holland was. Luckily for me, taking care of clematis was peaceful work, so I left her to it while I got down to sorting them out. Clematis are lovely plants with multitudes of different varieties, and as such, loads of different blossoms to show for it!

The difficulty is keeping up with which pruning type your clematis of choice is. Some grow from old wood or bloom in very early spring, so pruning should be avoided or done just after flowering; others should be pruned hard, all the way back to the ground in late winter; others only slightly pruned! It gets tricky though when you’re, say, working in a garden centre with old twiggy stock needing sorted and nary an identifying feature to be found!

I have to hand it to some of the wee guys, though. Where there’s a will (or a small crack in the side of an old pot), there’s a way (or a flower bud)!

 

11-4-17 Tuesday

What a mental day at work. We just got so many trolleys–Dutch trolleys, which are taller than seven feet and loads of shelves that are brimming with plant–back from Holland with our big plant order. This is the thing to do here, as I’ve seen from two different garden centres now, and I suppose it makes sense considering Holland is basically the hub of the botanical industry. I have a real hankering to go along with someone when they’re on their purchasing ventures. I’d absolutely love to see the organized madness of it all.

Anyway, I didn’t take a picture of anything interesting. Except for this. Which made a mysterious appearance in the breakroom today. I mean… just what the heck is this?

It was explained to me that this is an “old fashioned” way of describing lemon curd. I guess that makes sense. Curds are, after all, fashioned from milk. But something about describing it as cheese just makes my stomach turn a bit.

I also finished listening to my audiobook, Hillbilly Elegy–man. What a fantastic book. It’s a memoir of J.D. Vance, a boy raised mostly by his “hillbilly” grandparents, whom he calls Meemaw and Pepaw (as you do). It was such a heart-warming, funny, sad story all rolled into one, and a though provoking story as well, considering just what a hard life it is for the poor and Southern.