Our power failed at about mid-day yesterday, and after several revisions of the “repaired-by” time on the power company’s recorded telephone message, several engineers turned up in our garden at about 6 pm (we have an electricity transformer there) and announced that because they hadn’t even identified the source of the problem yet, they were going to install a temporary generator to keep us supplied. What nice people!

After several more deadlines had passed, a team of chaps with floods lights and head torches arrived in the lane in the early hours of this morning, made all sorts of banging and clattering noises, and at about 2.15 am, turned our power supply back on.

It was way too late, dark, and wet for us to investigate what they’d done last night, but we were mighty impressed when we ventured out this morning to find this :

Enough to supply us, and a few others ....

It could be catastrophic for us to lose power for any length of time of course – our irrigation system is electrically powered, so if the weather was hot and dry we’d be in real danger of losing stock, so hats off to the power company!

And the reason Farmers get nil?   It seems that the problem was caused by a plough ripping through an underground supply cable.   Ploughing too deep, or too close to the field boundary?   Cable not trenched deeply enough?   No doubt that’s a debate that the power company will be having with the farmer in question, but for now, take a bow Central Networks, you’ve played a blinder!

(This blog post is brought to you courtesy of the generator in the lane!)

Mellow fruitfulness must be next then....

We know it’s a sign of getting older when time seems to pass quicker, but blimey, surely it can’t be autumn yet?

It is, of course, classic August weather;  it’s a transitional month, still gloriously warm when the sun shines, but with noticeably longer and cooler nights, it’s a real teaser for things to come.

And while we may mourn the apparently accelerating passage of time, there’s always a bright side – the first picking of hedgerow blackberries made it into the freezer earlier in the week, so the first apple and blackberry crumble of winter can’t be far away!

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.

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….

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!

The view from our front window at 8.30 this evening.

]]> http://www.barlownurseries.co.uk/blog/2010/04/sunset-over-shropshire/feed/ 0