It's all good.
Okay, it's MOSTLY all good! I've been having a lot of fun with the "perennials and nursery stock" business. In order to sell trees and shrubs, I jumped in with both feet! It's such a small operation, but then I'm drawing on a community of just a few hundred people!
Just before my annual "perennial" sale, I had a chat with a gardening friend who I admire for her knowledge of all things botannical, her hard work, and her skill in landscaping her own yard and other properties in our town. In conversation, I mentioned that I had a copy of the same nursery catalogue as SHE had been using, and I asked if she thought she'd EVER run out of room to plant.
It was only then that I realized that my friend was the buyer for HER friends who had opened a "farm supply" store in town, and was ordering nursery stock for them to sell. She explained that she did not know that I was going to carry those kinds of things, and that she had limited her selection of regular perennial plants because of my business. How sweet is that? So now we discovered that we're both going to carry trees and shrubs, and I replied, "Well that'll be fine; people will just keep going 'round and 'round to the places that sell all kinds of plants, and hopefully we'll keep most of them from buying what they need at the big box stores in Prince George!".
Hardly anyone in town has caught on to the fact that I HAVE nursery stock here, but I just got my "main" shipment yesterday, DAYS after my annual sale. I did receive product on the bus on the day of my sale, but mostly it is dormant stock out of cold storage, and bundles of trees that are "whips". Quite a few bushes and small trees did sell last weekend... but you should SEE the selection that I received yesterday!! Okay, I'll go take a picture if it's not raining by the time I type this blog entry.
I'm so inspired! There are tall apple trees with FRUIT on already, everything in full leaf and some trees with spring bloom. There are lovely little junipers and bigger spreading ones too. I wouldn't care if I got "stuck with" any or all of it!
Having said that, I do hope I get my investment back. The other consideration is that I already cannot keep up with my "display" gardens; even flower beds that are relatively "new" are full of weeds and stupid grass. In many places, I have to actually dig out huge chunks of soddy soil and remove the precious plant from the middle of THAT. It has been hard digging and pulling, and yesterday I was exhausted by 10 a.m.. My hands ache and the joints are swollen and I'm kept awake sometimes at night by joint pain all over. Yesterday I actually just sat down on the ground and cried, but I think that helped. It's all about choices, and I'm just determined to carry on.
So, the flower beds are not so much display gardens, but just the flower beds of a human being (who is 51 years old) and I'll just keep at it. One of my friends, in about the same situation in her yard, says, "I just decided to tackle it one bed at a time, sticking with it until it's all done." She means that she's going to clean up thoroughly, and not do just a little weed pulling or hoeing enough to make the beds LOOK tidier. I think, for both of us, the problem is that by the time we get around to ALL the different cultivated areas, it will be high time to start back at the beginning.
Sigh. C'est la vie.
I'll go see if I can take a picture of the nursery stock in pots (at this point, they're no trouble at all!)
Thanks, everyone. ~Ann
