Morning all,


This is the first weekend when it has felt, to me, like the first stirrings of spring gardening weather. Bit brighter, warmer and more colourful. The daffs are all coming out and the buds are swelling and splitting in some of the hedges. Hurrah, let’s hope the tills swell as the purses split open when the gardening public hit the plant sales areas. The plants on the nursery certainly know it’s springtime with plenty of chunky fresh shoots getting going, even the Hostas are getting started.

It can seem a bit shallow this week to focus on the apparently trivial bits of our nursery life considering the astonishing events unfolding in Japan. The coverage of world events by new technology, ironically developed and produced in the area provides compelling images of a huge disaster which is still to unveil its true outcome. If there can be a bright side to such an event, it must be the Japanese peoples use of modern design and technology to build earthquake proof facilities and buildings. The relatively low loss of life from such a huge quake so close to the shoreline is quite astonishing when compared to the devastation in recent years in China, Christchurch and Haiti from relatively small quakes. It is such a tragic shame that the tsunami which followed hit so swiftly, before the warnings could be fully effective.

Back to our little world, and although we are weeny it is still our bit, and where we can still make things happen. It’s been week of ups and downs here. On the up side we were very busy again which is great and will be especially good when the dosh actually begins to flow back in and knock the overdraft back a bit! We also got a bit of potting done and three new samples of peat-free potting composts arrived for us to trial. We got most of the minor frost damage to the irrigation repaired, I hope, so not too many leaks when it is all switched on. We need a few more replacement valves before I can leave everything on all the time but we are not far off. We don’t quite have the automatic part of the system set up yet, so I am setting things going manually at the moment and this week I mastered a new bit of modern high tech to help, the timer alarm on my mobile. As I don’t get off the nursery much and have no friends my mobile rarely gets an outing, my monthly bill comes out at about 75p, so to find such a useful function makes the £50 it cost several years ago much more worthwhile. There is also the extra street cred to consider as I walk down the nursery, head down, mobile in hand, punching things into the key pad with my thumb, tripping over pots and falling into drains!

Thursday saw another birthday slip by with some lovely cards and presents and the shock of being so old that I couldn’t remember how old I actually was! I suffered a huge overdose of sugar through the day, with all the various cakes that arrived with visitors, but that was easier to recover from than an over indulgence in alcohol that used to occur in younger days.

Eco news

Chocolate Teapot of the Year goes to the general management and organisational unhelpfulness of the banking system. The week started really well on the turbine front, with lots of positive noises from the banks pilot renewable energy financing scheme and our bank manager, but got turned on its head over 24 hrs and they effectively forced us out of a deal, when they couldn’t make us fit in with the rules that each bank department has.
I don’t have enough space to explain the detail, but because putting in an energy installation is not as simple as buying a tractor or combine (surprising to who?) they can’t do it under the same system and the alternative way, at present, was to instruct solicitors and experts to do a load more stuff at a cost in excess of £20,000 to secure a right over the feed-in-tariff and all the kit, organise a shed load of extra separate security for the project and get us to finance the project to the point of completion when they would take it over. This basically means that for lots of extra cost and time delays, they would lend us the money just as long as we can prove that we don’t actually need it! Does anyone really want to get this sort of thing going, or is it all just lip service. We had our accountant in this week, to report back on the project figures and his simple answers to the questions of; is it a good deal for the investors and for the nursery? was that it was a ‘no brainer’ (in the positive sense). It was a short meeting. It is still all going ahead, but only with the help of our families and a further resolve on our part to reinvest any nursery profit rather than squandering it on management remuneration.

Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

PS. Frogspawn has appeared at last.