We can’t actually remember when we did our first Newport Show, but it must be about 12 years since our late neighbour John Byrd (who just happened to be show president that year) knocked on our door, and cajoled us into taking a stand.

At the time it seemed like a huge leap into the unknown, and THE BIG LEAGUE, because we’d never done a show so large, or laid out so much cash for a single event.

A strange twist of fate ensued a few weeks later when the horticultural secretary ‘phoned and explained that one of the show’s long standing exhibitors had pulled out, and asked if we’d put on an extra large display to try and fill what would otherwise have been a bit of a void on the show ground.

And so began an annual routine that would see us fronting the horticulture marquee for something like the next dozen years.   It was a mutually beneficial arrangement – we got local publicity and sold some plants, and the show ground got a special bit of plant-based animation and colour.  In truth, it was an arrangement and a feature on the nursery calendar that we thought would continue until we became too infirm to carry on (which is a few years off yet, hopefully).

Newport Show holds a special place in the hearts of thousands of Novaportans; we’ve met people who’ve been to every show in their lives, and stewards who’ve volunteered at the show, year in year out, for decades.   It’s a local institution, and generates a fierce pride amongst many of the townsfolk.   And it’s a lovely community to be part of – there is real magic in the air on show day, and being part of it is genuinely exciting.  The sense of anticipation as the sun rises over the showground is electric (yes, we’ve been there before dawn some days!).

And so it surprised nobody more than us to find that this year we spent show day serving customers on the nursery, and not on a showground stand.

It’s always been part of the Barlow Nurseries business plan that we’d do fewer and fewer shows each year, and skew the business more and more towards sales from home.   Shows are phenomenally hard work, and it’s not a lifestyle that you can continue into your dotage.

The plan has been going well – in our early days Louise was selling at shows on about 35 days each year;  this year we’re down to just 4 show days.   But we always assumed that Newport Show wouldn’t be part of the wind-down;  it’s extreme proximity (the show ground is about 3 miles from the nursery) made the logistics pretty straightforward, and it was fun – we’d see huge numbers of friends and customers there, and it was as much a  social occasion as a sales opportunity.

But in the end, the economics defeated us.   The grim reality is that agricultural shows tend to be too expensive for horticulture exhibitors.   We’ve tried all the nearby shows (and some not so nearby ones!) over the years (Nantwich, Stafford, Oswestry, Burwarton, West Mids (RIP!) Bakewell) and found them all too expensive.   We hung in with Newport for sentimental reasons as much as anything.   Then, about 4 years ago the committee decided that they were out of step with what they perceived to be the going rate for agricultural show fees, and that they would wind their fees up (in “manageable” steps), until they achieved market rate.   This, combined with a less relaxed attitude to the amount of space we could consume, meant that our 2009 fees were about 3 times what we’d paid in our first year.

This is all dead normal stuff of course;  we have no problem with the show getting as much as they can from their exhibitors.   And no problem with the rules of supply and demand which inevitably apply – just a bit sad that we find ourselves low down on the curve, so our demand is going to drop off quickest!

In reality then, the writing has been on the wall for a few years.   We could see the fees escalating beyond reach.   We tried to put a case forward for special horticutural rates, but our pleas fell on deaf ears.   We tried to cost the show in a way that would make our attendance worthwhile, but even with our most creative accounting hats on, we couldn’t make it work.  Economically, the show doesn’t make sense anymore.   And the grim reality is that we’re here to make a living, so if it isn’t working we can’t do it, no matter how much we’d like to.

And so, we’re not!

We were expecting our Saturday at home to be very quiet, but someone somewhere must be looking out for us because we had one of our best Saturdays of the year.   In July, in a business which peaks in spring.   Completely inexplicable, but wonderfully reassuring.  If we’d been at the show we’d have missed that custom entirely, and left those customers disgruntled that we’d been closed when they came.

So a decision reluctantly reached, but happily concluded.   As one of our visitors said – “you don’t need to go to the show – you’ve got your own show right here!”

It was but a moment between us consigning this bundle of fleece to a cardboard box in the polytunnel (it had just been doing duty keeping the pigeons off our newly planted runner beans) and Spot deciding that it would be a waste not to find another use for it….

Time for a quick nap....

..it must be time for the Arley Garden Festival

We’ve been going to the annual Arley Garden Festival for maybe a dozen years, and have achieved fame (or perhaps notoriety) amongst both visitors and fellow traders for the carpet of Coreopsis with which we front our stall each year.

A week away from perfect....

Every year is different of course. In previous years we’ve sometimes had to dead head the plants because they’ve flowered a little early (they’re such floriferous and obliging plants that there are always new blooms ready to take the place of any you remove) but this year, with everything blooming late, we were worried that they might miss the Arley boat.

But no, reliable to the end, they’ve just started to show colour, and with warm sunny weather forecast for the coming week, they should be in peak condition for next weekend’s show.

If you’re within striking distance of Arley, it’s a grand day out – there are glorious gardens to explore (including a spectacular herbaceous border, reputed to be the oldest in the country) loads of nurseries and garden paraphenalia stalls, floral displays, foods, crafts, gifts, children’s activities and loads of other stuff to keep you entertained.

The field behind the nursery was awash with wild poppies last year – gazillions and gazillions of them – to the extent that passers-by would detour onto the nursery to stare at them, and the field was almost more red than green.

OK chaps, stand at ease...

This year, probably thanks to a more intensely sown crop, the poppies have been largely defeated by the wheat – except here, where we have a line of them, less than a metre across, stretching right across the field.

Presumably the precision seeder was missing a station or two, and the wheat was sown just that bit thinner on this strip….and delivered the most unlikely crop of wild flowers we could imagine.

Or maybe there are alien forces at work, contriving signals to their mother ship disguised as agricultural machinery failures….

We love living in the country, and we especially love springtime (did we mention that already?).   We love the rituals of the changing seasons, and get unreasonably excited when we see our first swallows, and hear the first cuckoo.

But our joy is wearing a bit thin this year as we worry that there may not be that many cuckoos around to herald future springtimes.   According to the BBC Wales website cuckoo numbers declined 37% between 1994 – 2007, and judging by the apparently solitary existence of our neighbourhood cuckoo, things really are getting tough out there in cuckoo land.

We heard our first cuckoo some weeks ago, and have been hearing him sporadically ever since.  But this week things have been hotting up, presumably as the poor chap gets more and more desperate to find a mate.   For the last several days our local bird has been calling pretty much continuously from dawn to dusk, enchanting us and visitors to the nursery, but apparently not charming any lady cuckoos.

You can have too much of a good thing of course, and while the cuckoo’s call is undoubtedly captivating, it can be, well, a bit intrusive when it starts at 4.30 am, and frankly, a bit monotonous after 5 or 6 hours.

It must be the same for the poor bird tho’ mustn’t it?   Imagine having a total vocabulary of just two syllables, and having a charm offensive consisting of nothing more than continually repeating them.  And then having to repeat them to the point that you get the ornithological equivalent of laryngitis – grim times indeed in cuckoo land.

Actually, we’re not sure whether our local bird is struggling, or just introducing a bit of contrived variety to relieve his own boredom.  Or perhaps he’s going for the sympathy vote…..but every so often, he loses it, and his normally sonorous “cuckoo” comes out as a wheezy “cu, cu, a, hooo”.   Or the second syllable comes in for a bit of improv croup, and we get “cuck, ah, ah, hoo”.

All we hope is that he finds a mate soon, and comes back next year….

Does this count as burgeoning?

We had the annual visit of one of our local gardening societies last Thursday evening, and this time, for the first time for a few years, the weather was kind.    In fact, absolutely wonderful.    A balmy evening, barely a hint of a breeze, and warm enough for nowt but t-shirts until well after dusk.   A band of happy people exploring the nursery, then being fed tea and biscuits in our getting-more-like-a-garden garden, sitting on chairs borrowed from our local village hall, and generally having a jolly old time.

We might have mentioned this before, but May is our favourite month.  The plants all look lovely, the nursery is stacked to the gunwales with spring stock, and when the sun shines, and the nursery is full of happy customers, its glorious.

Spring in the tree aisles

It’s spring!

Leaves are unfurling, colours are zinging, the blossom looks lovely….we know this because we can see the tree aisles on the nursery from the house, and this is the view we get when we fling back the curtains each morning.

May is definitely the best month of the year!

Busy, busy, busy….but never so busy that we could ignore this glorious end to the day.

The view from our front window at 8.30 this evening.

Except to say – the swallows are back!    The blogosphere has been awash with reports of swallow sightings for weeks, and we were beginning to think the family who we’ve become accustomed to sharing our summer garden with had had a better offer, but at the weekend they finally returned.  Hovering at the back door, investigating whether our back hall would be a good nesting site, dive bombing the cat as she crosses the garden, and no doubt eventually, as usual, deciding to nest under the lych gate.

Not the variety or colour we ordered, but stunning nonetheless!

And the cuckoo is back too!   Unusually, our tardy swallows were beaten back here this year by the cuckoo, who’s been joining in the dawn chorus for a week now.

Spring has sprung!

As mad May approaches, activity on the nursery is ramping up, and threatening to move from “frantic” to “maybe we can spend less time eating or sleeping…” The sun is shining, the grass is growing (dammit) and the countryside is developing the spectacular lime green glow that comes with the youthful vigour of newly unfurled foliage.

All’s well with the world!   Enjoy!   (And don’t the tulips look lovely?).

Many years ago, when our children were pre-school, and CBBC ,cbeebies, the cartoon channel and digital television were just TV mogul’s pipe dreams, we used to resort to recording what meagre offerings terrestial TV sent our way, and the kids would watch stuff again (and again) when there was nothing on live.   Amongst other things, this accounts for our ability, even now, to recite most of the dialogue from (the original, Gene Wilder version of) Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory….

One of the more obscure delights to emerge from the VHS machine at this time was a 1936 MGM Happy Harmonies cartoon which told of a band of subterranean elves whose job it was to add the colours of spring to the world each year, and how they fought an epic (and somewhat chaotic) battle with resurgent winter before spring was finally sprung.

In our family folklore, this has always been referred to as “The Colours of the World” although having just searched it out on YouTube (is there anything you can’t find on YouTube?) we were surprised to see it’s actually called “To Spring”.   And every year, when spring falters and our eccentric climate stumbles back into winter, the cry goes up “It’s like the colours of the world!”.

That cry is starting to sound a little worn right now, as spring 2010 splutters and falters and….well, lets just hope things are about to improve.   Easter weekend lived up to it’s reputation for meteorlogical variability, but the forecast for later this week is looking promising, and the long term forecast for April looks typical, if not actually great.   Most things on the nursery and in the garden have got buds just itching to burst, so surely any day now we’re going to see a splendid spring, aren’t we?

And if you have 9 minutes 39 seconds to spare….