Fairy lights don’t twinkle anymore

Working in customer’s gardens is great.

Full satisfaction when completing and looking back over a customer’s garden, on the tasks completed, mowing, edging, brushing, dead heading, planting, weeding, watering and all those usual gardening tasks to do.

Oh, and including the repairing of fairy lights!

Yes, those three mile long strands of almost ‘invisible’ (you know what’s coming) wire with trillions of twinkling lights which appear in the hours of darkness generated through a tiny solar cell in daylight hours.

Lovely!

So why aren’t they secateur resistant of  about six inch thick armour plated cable? It wouldn’t be that hard to develop!

Customers love them. They are everywhere festooned on gateways, fences, tree trunks and yes stems of plants. I guess it’s a ‘hang up’ (no pun intended) and carry over from Christmas?

“hey, we can have these twinkly lights all year round and not cost us a penny in electricity. Let’s go get miles and miles of them for our garden!”

Now I’m not a party pooper. I bet they look lovely and create a ‘Blackpool illumination’ theme for your garden all year round. I just wish I knew where they were.

“can you just prune back those shrubs please, they’re getting too big?” I do ask now…..but….before I would just snip away and then think.” Oh my gosh what’s this?…( or similar). Oh, another pruned fairy light cable (Cable?.. I think not..more like a strand of cotton entwined through the shrub I’m pruning. And why is it that I couldn’t see it before the secateurs went ‘snip?’

I do ask now though if there are any fairy lights within plants. I say within plants as at the time they are placed on a plant they are no doubt hung in it’s outer edges only to find as the plant grows the fairy lights become hidden more inside the plant, probably less effective at night and obviously less visible.

So, my first ‘snippit’ occasion, my shock and horror that I’ve cut through a customers fairy lights. It’s one of those ‘ I can’t undo’ moments realising that eventually retrieving two pieces of microscopic wires and thinking ‘ best act quick here before the customer finds out.’

Now I’m not one to just whistle and walk away. I just own up if I break something of a customers in their garden..accidents do happen… so it’s easier to say you’ve broken something and pay for any damage caused than just try to ‘cover my tracks’ only for the customer to do their ‘Sherlock Holmes impression’ and deduce it was me who did it ‘in the garden with the secateurs!’

So, off to the local DIY store I wizzed…connector block, electrical tape purchased. I didn’t have any of these in my van as I’m a gardener not an electrician, however I do now just incase!  Already have suitable screwdriver and pliers. Wizzed back and after a few more minutes fairy lights reconnected and ready to blaze away in the nearing hours of darkness.

As I said earlier I always say if I’ve done something ‘bad’ in a customer’s garden.

“hi just letting you know, on pruning your shrubs I didn’t realise there were fairy lights hung inside the branches. Sorry. But I went to the DIY store and bought stuff to fix them with. Obviously, no charge, it was my mistake.”

and the reply came….

” oh thank you for being so honest and taking the time to get them repaired but not to worry, they haven’t worked for years!”

Now, outwardly I smiled, inside I ‘smiled’ too or something very dissimilar!

So, my way since then has been to ask “are there any fairy lights inside the plants that I ‘can’t see’? Do they work?!

Every day’s a learning day in my gardening world!

now for a cup-of-T