Telstales

Tag: gardening

  • Suck it up Bobs at it again

    It’s just about Autumn time here in the UK….. Days are a little shorter now, temperatures although mild are a little bit down.

    And leaves from deciduous trees are changing into their Autumn clothes and starting to parade their Autumn attire as they drop peacefully and quietly to the ground…Lovely to see and a good reminder that the cooler months are coming soon!

    So, so peaceful to see the Autumn leaves landing on the ground silently….then Bob next door decides “That’s it, you lil buggers…you’re not staying in my garden any longer…even though they’ve only just appeared overnight…..how do I know this…..well Bob has bought himself a ‘gardening vac’…. Just like an indoor hoover only meaner and angrier which compliments Bob in his understanding of nature really!

    ‘Suck-it-up-Bob’ gets to work around his back garden area. Sucking up allsorts of stuff.. Yes..mainly leaves but obviously all small beneficial insects that start to use the leaf litter as their Winter home…. So just like a mincer that grinds chunks of meat or a wood chipper that sorts out branches, so the garden vac angrily and whiningly munches anything it can suck up it and bag it into microscopic pieces.

    I use a rake…it rakes up fallen leaves and I leave them to decompose in the adjacent borders to provide organic matter to the soil and for Winter food for birds foraging in the garden finding grubs to eat when flicking leaves over ( a funny sight to see)

    Still, Bob’s garden is once again in pristine condition…well..for a minute or two as another leaf…ooops…I mean batch of leaves fall to the ground….never mind Bob…it will keep you busy right through to December 😀

    now for a cup-of-T

  • What?…you charge for talking?… No way

    Ok, so I’m busy with my gardening business. I don’t make a lot of money but at my time of life there’s more to it than that.

    It keeps me busy, active, physically fit as I can be, mentally engaged keeping track of everything that it takes to run a small business and most importantly, happy!

    Now, my charges to customers range from some quoted work so it’s fixed every visit, say for mowing where everything is the same week in week out, to more variable gardening consisting of many different and varying gardening tasks to do on each visit, so these costs do change according to what needs doing.

    All my customers are happy with the arrangements for the gardening I have done over the last 10.5 years!…yaay!… And then, of course, there’s always one 😁

    So, at this customer’s garden where I undertake many varied tasks, the customer, by the way has done this many times, creates this type of ‘chatty blockage’ always as I’ve just finished…. Lovely to have a chat in passing, but I’m always conscious of my time and delays have a knock on effect through my planned working day.

    Now, I’m certainly not a grabber. A few minutes here and there being non productive doesn’t really matter, but when it’s a case of giving my horticultural expertise which I trained for and it’s substantial in time, then I do charge as I feel it’s all part of my gardening visit.

    It was questions asking about grass seed, lawn fertiliser, getting a better lawn, rose pruning, clematis pruning, cracked plant pot, rose diseases and staining to paving, (by others)…. It took time, my time, my expertise, my knowledge….so why not charge just a little bit more to impart this knowledge for my customer to understand and learn something new? Simple really?…well, obviously not!

    And this became an issue I’ve not encountered before.

    It was £3.00 additional cost.

    The customer complained.

    I explained.

    The customer sacked me.

    I didn’t blink an eye.

    I filled the space with a new customer on my reserve list.

    I’m happy!

    now for a cup-of-T

  • Did I say too much?

    Visiting an elderly customer, Sam, been doing his garden for four years now, every fortnight all year round, I said the usual “hi” to him and after a short chat carried on working.

    Sam used to live in a large detached house and after his wife died and as the years rolled on, Sam just felt the house was too big for just himself, so he downsized to a small detached bungalow.

    His garden is fairly simple, small front lawn with bits of artefacts laid out in specific places, the same can be said for the rear garden too, albeit in the rear garden, beyond the lawn there are planted up borders which wrap around the perimeter fence lines and are filled with colourful plants throughout the year and giving varied gardening for me to do on each visit.

    Now, a while ago in another bungalow nearby, and after being helpful by doing a few DIY jobs, Sam became friendly with a lady, Betty, who lived on her own.

    They really are a great match and hit it off straight away, so much so that they developed a friendship in their elderly years, which is lovely to see such friendship and companionship spending time together, helping each other in their own houses, going shopping, eating out, visiting family and having several grand holidays together each year. Although, must say, they do live in their own bungalows, probably still needing their own space and semi-independence.

    And Sam soon introduced me to Betty and I became her gardener too, extra work for me!

    Now I’m always busy in folk’s gardens, never been a slacker, I charge by the hour as there are lots of different gardening tasks to do on each visit, I tend to keep chit-chat to a minimum, always conscious that the customer is paying for my time.

    Yet, it’s always good to talk and being friendly is a part of me and my gardening approach.

    So, my route always takes me from Sam’s garden onto Betty’s, the next stop. On my last visit, Sam was sat there in his conservatory, chilling out in a reclining chair, reading the newspaper, drinking a cup of tea and eating biscuits. I said “hi Sam and how are you today?” “Fine thanks” came the reply, “just taking a day off, resting, putting my feet up and having a whole day to myself doing nothing”.

    “Well, that’s a grand way to spend your day, enjoy the sunshine, oh and your tea and bikkies!” And with a few other comments about his garden and what I was there to do, I carried on working and noticing that after my noisy mowing and edging had finished and my quieter manual gardening tasks were underway, Sam had drifted off to sleep. So on my finishing I quietly walked away without disturbing him. Afternoon naps must be a super way to chill out!

    Onto Betty’s garden. Smaller front and back garden than at Sams, yet takes just as long mainly due to the back lawn holding various statues and other artefacts strewn around the lawn which kind of makes me dizzy when I mow it. Very intricate and difficult to mow, edge the lawns and clean up without knocking one of the said artefacts over. Still, it’s work and income so I don’t complain and like the challenge!

    Betty appeared as I ventured into the back garden. “Hi Betty, and how are you today?” Betty does get engrossed in conversation and it is quite hard after a couple of minutes chat to break free without appearing rude and me sliding into the conversation that I must ‘crack-on’ as I’ve more gardens to do today, seems to wash over her, it just doesn’t connect with me being busy.

    However in the brief chat she asked if I had called to Sams yet?

    “Oh, yes” was my reply, “looks like he’s just having day to himself, sitting in his reclining chair, reading the newspaper, drinking tea and eating biscuits and saying he was just having a day off to the point that he had fallen asleep whilst I was working there!…. Bless him!”

    “Bless him?….Bless him?” she bluntly replied, “he said he had a busy day today doing housework, washing, drying and ironing his clothes and really just too busy at home to do anything together today.”

    I just looked at her as she was looking more confused as she was speaking realising that maybe her friend Sam wasn’t quite as busy today as he had made out to be!

    And the penny dropped in my head that without realising it, maybe I had just said ‘a little bit too much’ and maybe just caused a problem of a non-gardening type!

    On finishing Betty’s garden I realised that her car was no longer on her driveway. I wonder where she went to?!

    now for my own cup-of-T

  • Three wasp whammi

    I’m not really afraid of bugs, insects and stingy thingys generally, kinda goes with the territory of my gardening business coming into close/very close contact with nature each day.

    Yet, I don’t care much for wasps. (Although, total respect for them)

    I’ve been told that if they land on you and you stay still they just mooch around your body then think….nah, nothing much going on here, so they fly away quite happily!

    That is, until they get just a little bit more aggressive. Was it something I did?.. hmm, probably!

    It wasn’t my fault, just a natural reactionary reaction!

    It wasn’t even during my working day.

    Just sat there minding my own business, one wasp decide to use my nose as it’s landing pad. Did I see it coming?.. nope. It just did it in a split second. Stay still?…. Nope!…react like an out of control wind mill?…ohh yes!

    In that split second that it had landed and my brain had computed what had happened….My hand in all my arm flapping motions knocked it off my nose, luckily without causing a nose bleed (whammie 1)…. Only to instantly realise I had knocked it off onto my arm when it was hanging on, from which my windmill arms realigned, I knocked it off again (whammie 2) only then to realise it had landed on my leg. Shrieks of bad language, from me, not the wasp, had me flailing about as I knocked it off again again (whammie 3)

    Angrily, the wasp (and me by now) whizzed around zipping and darting infront of me, and to my horror, two of its waspy mates had now turned up, presumably to join in with the fun, so I did an ‘exit stage left’ moment, like a coward, and hid indoors.

    Thinking it through afterwards, maybe I should just have stayed still when it first landed on my nose, but just had a vision of it crawling up one of my nose pipes and delivering a lil stingy thingy up there!

    I don’t care much for wasps! And I certainly didn’t care for an inflated and really sore nose pipe!

    now for a cup-of-T

  • The power of ‘on hold’

    I currently have 31 customers who’s gardens I maintain. As I’m now 66 and a half, and a bit more, I’ve reduced down from 40 customers to 31 over time and I guess I can twiddle with those numbers if required.

    Maybe it’s a semi-retirement phase I’m heading towards but reducing the numbers a little has given me just a bit more ‘me’ time and why not!

    My 31 customers have always paid promptly which I thank them for! Apart from one this year.

    Now I know this customer is very busy. Still eats though. Drives a car and must pay bills for that. Pays electric and phone bills or wouldn’t be able to check in and update their FB page daily. So why not pay me for the gardening I’ve done?

    My gardening arrangements have always been loose and friendly, never wanting to be authoritarian about it, let’s face it, will never be more than a ‘micro business’ and if it all went wrong, well nothing much lost overall. Yet, my work, generates an invoice after maintaining each garden. And each invoice equals my income which I track and reconcile methodically so I can see at a glance who has and hasn’t paid!

    I don’t mind it taking a while to pay me, folk do get busy, on holiday, forget to pay, all being genuine reasons for non payment, to a point. So I monitor carefully and after a while send a courteous reminder about the bills when they haven’t paid.

    Well, with this non paying customer, April, May and June went by (courteous reminders sent) and all the work I had done there and invoices generated resulted in no payments made. I had got to the point where I thought maybe they were in hospital or even worse and no one had told me! Even with my gardening detective head on looking in their wheelie bins to notice nothing in them at all…lead me to think the worst.

    Gardens grow so I knew I had to keep visiting on my regular frequency basis or would become hard work to put back as it needed to be. So through April, May and June kept their garden maintained. But following a visit at the start of July and with another invoice raised and no payments made, I just felt enough was enough!

    Deciding to up the tempo and turn the ‘screw’ a bit, my email had the title “Gardening on hold” in bold type face.

    And explaining, with the appropriate invoices and outstanding payments displayed in my email, that until all payments were made that I was putting gardening at their place “on hold”…..and….within one hour of me sending this email, resulted in a full payment and sincere apology!

    The power of ‘on hold’ certainly worked for me and although not something I wanted to do, really had an instant effect!

    time for a cup-of-T

  • Water, water, everywhere

    created Monday 21st July 2025

    So at long last we have rain and rain oh and thunder and lightning accompanied by, yes, more rain.

    We needed it. Apart from the minimal amount for the last four months or so there really hasn’t been any rain here in North Yorkshire and as the reservoirs are lower than usual we have recently encountered a hosepipe ban.

    So over the weekend and today.. “Rain..Rain..Rain”…”Bring it on” I say. But, it’s just so much, far too much in one go. I was looking out over my garden during the daily deluges, which soon flooded over the lawn and onto the adjoining paving with roof guttering unable also to cope with the volumes. I’m really not complaining…. We need a heck of a lot more but it’s a start.

    And visiting my customer’s gardens today, the soil was basically dry to touch, yes, puddles in dips along pathways yet lawns and soil borders in a condition that you really wouldn’t have thought such a weekend deluge had taken place!

    So usual gardening continued as required without even getting muddy wet! YaY!

    now for a cup-of-T

  • OMG.. confusion reigns

    So as you are aware, I have my own gardening business. I’m 66 and well over a half now..still working..and why not.. while I can….I should.

    But, I’ve decided to ‘prune’ it back slightly by working just four days a week, and taking Fridays off ( if I can)

    And .. it’s so confusing….( Maybe it’s cuz I’m just getting a tad bit older)….

    Yaaay.. Friday off.

    But as I progress through the day doing what I enjoy…aka gardening in my own garden for a change ( oh my..I do need to get a life 🤣), I start to get confused and by the afternoon..as I’m off, and not working in folk’s gardens….I tell myself it’s Saturday….which in turn brings it’s own problems in that when Saturday comes I think it’s Sunday!

    And it gets worse when Sunday comes.. it then becomes the eighth day of the week.

    Soo soo confusing.

    I really don’t know how folk cope with shift work!

    Maybe a five day working week is easier for me to cope with!…as long as it’s Monday to Friday inclusive!

    now for a cup-of -T

  • Ahhh H2O…pleased to meet you?

    Well, here in North Yorkshire it’s been dry..very dry indeed. No rain here for many months with the threat of hosepipe bans being mentioned by the ‘leaky rich’ water company who administer our Chlorine/ Fluorine tasting water, oh, gosh I really do hate the taste, but necessary to keep myself hydrated!

    So, I’m so glad this May Bank holiday sesh is laden with rain. I took part in ‘no Mow May’, oooh and also in April, March, and of course February as the continuing dry spell prevented my lawns from growing. ‘No Mow May’ should have been relabelled ‘No Grow May!’

    Yellow could easily be the new green for grass colour!

    Yet as I’m trundling around my customer’s gardens searching for weeds to oyk out they still insist on me cutting their lawns.

    “But they’re in resting mode and gone all yellowy-brown” I say to them which falls away as they insist on me cutting deadened blades of grasses. I really think they just like the stripes the mower creates to give that manicured cut. It’s just a change in colour of their lawns from deep green to straw yellow!

    Still, some rain will be welcomed everywhere and certainly bring with it the growing and refreshing of lawns, ooh and a resurgence of weeds to their borders!

    Let’s see what next week’s gardening has in-store (or straw) for me!

    now for a cup-of-T

  • Flagging

    It just got so hot, late last week, getting through maintaining eight gardens in a day.

    The final garden, I was on my last legs, or ‘flagging’ as it’s described, and I don’t mean laying paving slabs!

    Yet, as I looked around, there, standing tall and strong were a group of Flag Iris, enjoying the heat and sun of the day.

    They really weren’t ‘flagging’ like me!

    now for a cup-of-T

  • Shhhh…you woke me up

    So it was 3.20pm yesterday afternoon (or 15.20 in metric time!) and completing the initial strim round of two lawns in one of my customer’s gardens, I returned to my van to replace my ‘battery’ operated strimmer ( quite a quiet bit of kit) for my ‘petrol mower ( lot more noisier piece of kit!)

    I was greeted, as I was doing this turnaround, by the lady next door who suddenly decided to wipe over her window ledge (seemed to me like an excuse to be out there) as she turned to me and said…

    ” Do you know that you’ve just disturbed my afternoon nap with that thing?” ( I was hoping that she was talking to me and not my strimmer!)

    Now normally comments like like make me decide….

    -ignore it

    -comment back flatly

    -reply with an edge to it

    -engage in discussion mainly about the glorious weather day we were having

    -reply pleasantly

    …..I chose just to be pleasant.

    Then I thought, should I really have been pleasant?…. Well, yes if course I should, but it’s the middle of the afternoon not the middle of the night, I’m busy working and this neighbour has chosen to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon and just made me think, noise can be annoying to folk, yet things do need to get done at times (this garden takes half an hour once per fortnight!)

    In the end, in a light hearted manner, I just said, “oh, I’m sorry, it must be really nice to have an afternoon nap. And if my strimmer hadn’t woken you up then I’m sure my big mower would have!…. It’s really really noisy!

    Strimmed, mowed, brushed up (presumably my hand held, non motorised wooden brush would probably caused her distress too), quick chat with my customer and disappeared into the late afternoon returning home shortly after thinking, shall I grab some lunch or just take ‘my own’ afternoon nap, hoping no one disturbs me!

    now for a cup-of-T

    ( or maybe another nap later on!)