Green with envy!

 Just back from 6 days in Tresco and learned that this winter they went
down to 0.5C for all of an hour.  Life's tough on Scilly...   ;-)  It
poured with rain most of the time we were there, which was an excellent
excuse to stay indoors and nearly wear out the battery on my Kindle!
(Stupidly, I'd forgotten the charger)  But the island really needed the
water as they don't water anything but pots in the gardens or round the
hotel, pub etc.  It was all looking very lush and lovely and Aeoniums
were flowering and covered in bees.  The 'Fortunate Isles' were well
named! Ray has two little bags, full of all kinds of goodies re
cuttings, so he's a happy chappie!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

 
echinosum;927470 Wrote:

I think the 'Fortunate Isles' is rather apt, I remember a few years ago,
I was over there landscaping a garden on St Marys not long after a big
container ship was wrecked there in a storm (I think it was the SS Sita
or something like that ? ) Anyway, it was so funny, virtually everyone
was wearing these very flashy white trainers with the little lights in
the heels ?? Needless to say, one of the containers washed ashore, was
full of trainers HaHaHa. Another was carrying computer mice, and you
could see these everywhere being used to tie things up !! I even saw a
row of runner beans with the canes all neatly tied with computer mice
HaHaHaHa. But the most amazing thing was that nobody mentions these
'freebies' that get washed up from time to time, they just accept it as
part and parcel of island life.
Lannerman.




--
lannerman

 
I don't doubt for a minute that Ray had permission, but this may be a
warning to those who didn't:

Awake my Muse, bring bell and book
To curse the hand that cuttings took.
May every sort of garden pest
His little plot of ground infest
(Who stole the plants from Inverewe,
From Falkland Palace, Tresco too).
Let caterpillars, capsid bugs,
Leaf-hoppers, thrips, all sorts of slugs,
Play havoc with his garden plot,
And a late frost destroy the lot.

Laura Maconochie,
Inverewe
1967

--
 
Chris

Gardening in West Cornwall overlooking the sea.
Mild, but very exposed to salt gales

 

I love that and am going to print it out!  But yes, he had permission -
he has a sort of blanket permit to take cuttings all over the island,
though not from islanders' gardens, of course!  One time when we were
there, taking bits from the Abbey gardens, someone sidled up to him and
said "I've had a few of those, too"!  A friend of Ray's who also runs a
nursery was told by one of her staff that a customer was going round
nicking cuttings.  So when it came time to pay for the
legitimate-in-the-trolley plants, the owner rang up the total and then
said "And we'll say a fiver for the cuttings, shall we?"  Exit one very
red-faced customer!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon