writing – Garden Gate Flowers

The summer has been a steady learning curve as we have developed our cut flower production systems of growing, cutting, arranging and marketing. So, always looking for knowledge to help us on our way, Mrs B and took the opportunity to attend the horticultural equivalent of a Ted Talk. Otherwise known as the monthly meeting of the local gardening association at the village hall, October’s guest speaker was a cut flower farmer from a neighbouring county who promised to share the secrets of her success.

As non-members we paid our £2 per head for entry, a cost that would be covered by the Garden Gate Flowers training budget. There were over forty keen gardeners in attendance. The presence of Mr B and me reduced the average age by about ten years while my own attendance doubled the number of men

We were encouraged to buy raffle tickets, hoping for one of several exciting prizes. On the Table of Wonders I could see a hand-painted greetings card and a large bar of Toblerone, but for me the top prize was the large ball of Nutscene natural jute twine. You know when you have a reached a tipping point in your life, when a ball of string beats a bar of Swiss chocolate.

On another table, the members had brought in one ‘stem’ from their garden for the monthly competition, voted on by all present. Someone told me there was a time when the category of ‘something from the garden’ had a wider brief, resulting in countless jars of produce. Apparently the (now sadly deceased) previous Chair became so fed-up with repetitious entries of pickles, jams and jellies, she momentarily lost her patience and muttered an expletive under her breath. Overheard by another member, she is now privately known as “Mrs Fuck-Chutney”.

I think Mrs F-C would have been more accommodating of the entries this month which consisted of a range of roses, dahlias and a fine deep purple aster. But before we could vote, the lecture began. The speaker was a seasoned performer, winning over the audience with some well-placed flattery. Like Bono from U2 telling every gig audience they’re the ‘best ever’, our speaker knew how to work her particular crowd, complimenting them on the large turnout; noting their ‘stunning’ fashion sense; and then, rather bizarrely, telling everyone what wonderful toilets their hall has. She bracketed them alongside Gloucester Services in her top ten of public toilets. High praise indeed.

With the crowd eating out of her hand, she was able to flip through the rest of her Powerpoint, giving us pictures of her various pets, skipping the slide on accounts (“boring” she said) and getting to the nitty gritty of what to grow, how to grow it and what lessons she has learnt over the years.

It turns out, she has been doing this for six years but, after flogging herself every weekend going to farmers’ markets and stalls, she has decided to rein it back in and just do occasional bouquets for local delivery (as well as Ted Talks to gardening clubs). It was reassuring to know that GGF is doing the same things that she does. It appears there is no great mystery to it, although she did take great delight in sharing the “secret” way to wrap flowers. It turns out that this is how we wrap ours too, so maybe not that big a secret.

The talk ended with a discussion of seed suppliers (General consensus: Higgledy Garden, Good. Sarah Raven, Bad).

The talk was running twenty minutes over the hour, and we all felt we needed to get back home for hot chocolate and digestives, so it was left for the current chair to thank the speaker and make the draw. We did not win the ball of string, but we did depart with some stems of hollyhock which another member had brought it. No one seemed that interested in the hollyhocks until they heard the colour of the flowers was ‘blood red’ at which there was a noticeable stirring in the audience. Gardeners love a freebie – especially if it is a good claret.

We left having learnt a little but reassured that what we are doing a lot right. And we might have even have some hot red hollyhocks next summer.

It is Pablo we must thank for the fact that we own a dachshund. When Josh slept over at his colleague’s house after a “Thursday is the New Friday” drinks session got a bit out of hand, it was Pablo who woke him, tunnelling down into Josh’s sleeping bag demonstrating a sausage dog’s obsession with warm dark spaces. If Josh had not been the unwitting bedfellow of his colleague’s dachshund, he would not have expressed his desire to own one, neither would we have promised him one when he was ill, and nor would my work colleagues have gifted us the funds to acquire one in Josh’s memory.

Why am I telling you this? Perhaps to provide some context to explain how I recently found myself sitting in the kitchen at 2 a.m, reading to Mr Long because he could not – or would not – sleep in his own bed.

It started when we agreed to look after my brother’s dog, Bruno (a Vizler/Pointer cross) for ten days. On the first night, Badger’s ‘cousin’ opted to sleep in Badger’s small bed instead of his own, which meant he had to:

Turf Badger off it
Drag it out from under a low shelf and
Curl up really tightly to fit on it

The first we knew of this low-level canine bullying was the whining of our little pet at the kitchen door. Bruno wasn’t relinquishing the bed, so we took pity on Badger and allowed him to sleep in ours. Badger was delighted and became quite accustomed to the arrangement over the following ten nights. When Bruno departed, Badger saw no reason why he should return to his old bed in the kitchen.

But, since we wanted our own bed for ourselves, we shut him in the kitchen anyway. Unimpressed by the return to his old dormitory, Mr Long whined; quietly at first, but then louder and with more urgency. And then he started to bark. Not incessantly, just occasionally, but regularly enough to awaken us as we were tipping off to sleep.

It was not as if Badger was angry. Just disappointed.

Eventually, I got up and tried bribing him with treats to stay in his bed. Which he did, until I switched the lights out. When I turned the lights back on after five seconds, to check he was still in bed, my dachshund was half way across the floor, frozen in mid-step.

I tried a couple more times, but Badger was beginning to enjoy his own version of Grandmother’s Footsteps. So I did what any exasperated parent would do and decided to bore him to sleep, by sitting with my book and reading, albeit not out loud. I am not that deluded (yet). Miraculously, it worked.

I only had to repeat the exercise a couple of times over the next few nights before Badger accepted his own bed instead of ours.

It was reminiscent of when we had to manage the kids’ sleeping patterns and is one of many similarities between bringing up toddlers and looking after a dachshund. It is no coincidence. Simply cuddling Badger seems to release a dose of oxytocin as if I am holding my child. Of course physically, Josh and Badger are at opposite ends of the scale: one, six feet four inches tall; the other with four feet but only six inches tall. And their respective characters are equally far apart: quiet, mild mannered and reasonable against angry, demanding and self-centred.

But the arrival of Badger is directly linked to the loss of Josh, so, we can be forgiven for treating him like our lost boy. Even our daughter ironically (or otherwise) refers to Badger as ‘the favourite child’ and there might be some truth in the observation.

Not that we ever spoil him or bow to his demands. Apart from the occasional bedtime story.