Wednesday is our first staff training session of 2008.  We work with our staff to make them confident in their abilities to help you choose the beautiful trees, shrubs, perennials, hanging baskets, and flowers you need to achieve the look you want in your yard and garden.  And we train them to care for those same plants while they are still here in the store, so they’ll be healthy when you want them.

We know that part of the reason you shop with us is our level of product knowledge and our friendly customer service.  We hire friendly, helpful people and then train them in product knowledge.  This is the beginning of that training for this year.

We’re getting ready, are you?

Written by Lynn on the slope of Teasel Hill where the moderate temperatures of the day are falling through the night.

One of the first gifts my husband bought me (I think it was for a birthday) was an aquarium set up.  It was a great gift– I had wanted one for a long time, but with college and moving around it didn’t seem practical.  And on our young-married budget (we had a mattress but no bed to put it on at that point, I think.  We didn’t have a pot… you know how that ends.) And one day, there it was.  We filled it with water and gravel and plants and then fish, and except for an unexplained death every once in a while, I enjoyed it very much.  (Hatchet fish– shaped somewhat like a hatchet if you don’t think about it too much– like to take a leap out of the water from time to time, and if they have misjudged their position in the tank, they sometimes end up on the floor.  Which is OK if they do it in the daytime when you are there to pick them up, give them a good talking to, and put them back in.  But if they do it when there is no one around to rescue them they get a little stiff and… well… dead.)

When our boys came along, the fish and the boys peacefully co-existed most of the time.  If you don’t mention the unfortunate experience of one of them (neither ever admitted it) turning up the heater and cooking their little finny fannies but good.  We replaced the fish, and kept the boys.

Angel fish have always been my favorite fish.  But they are somewhat more agressive than a community tank can really adapt to.  I also liked guppies (the ones with the fancy tails) mostly, I think, because they were live bearers, and would breed prolifically.  (I’ve always like the idea of getting something for nothing, and this breeding pace gave me lots of free fish.)  Well, one of the favorite foods of angel fish, unfortunately, is just-born guppies.  After the angel fish had had his fill of this bounty, also the free fish bounty I had been waiting on for weeks, I, in a fit of pique, flushed him.   Of course I cried all afternoon, because, as I said, he was my favorite fish.  He was just too much of a bully to keep. 

After a while, the aquarium became too much to handle and was packed away and later sold to someone in the family.  My younger son kept asking, Mom, when are you going to get another aquarium?  And I just never got around to it.

Anyhow, the point of this story is to tell you that I finally have another aquarium, with fish, but no angel fish this time.  I’m trying to stick with community-friendly fish so we have no conflicts.  It sits to the left of my desk (where I can see it as I write, like now) and gives me pleasure with the sound of the water and the fluid motion of the fish.  I bought it for myself as a non-food reward for losing an amount of weight that I’m not going to share with you, and now I wonder what took me so long to decide to do it?

My favorite fish so far are three green glo danios, a type of zebra fish which I also have, but they are a bright day-glo yellowish green.  Quite unusual. (Note: In trying just now to find a photo of one to link to, I found out that the green glo is a genetically modified fish.  I’m not sure how I feel about that…)

Written by Lynn on the slope of Teasel Hill where I am still trying to beat a bout of pneumonia.

January 25th.  One more week and January is history.  I’m not a winter person at all, so January and February (especially February) can’t go too fast for me.  During the other months I am continually saying, “Slow Down!”  But this month and next I am saying, “Hurry up already!”

Seed catalogs are piling up; they are my winter salvation.  All those beautiful flowers and succulent vegetables!  This will finally be the year when the weeds and the bugs and the #@*! deer won’t get them.  The season is ripe with possibility!  All gardeners are, by their very nature, optimists.

At the garden center we are still ordering and redecorating– plants don’t begin to come in for another few weeks.  (And I’m certainly glad of that when I look at the nighttime temperatures and my propane bills!)  Our landscape team, Dawn and Chris, attended talks about landscaping at the recent CENTS show, and got some new great ideas.  Dawn has already done a We Plan/You Plant visit this year.

Written by Lynn on the slope of Teasel Hill where it is cold and the ground is covered with a light layer of snow.

We are just back from our first trade show of the season– the Central Environmental Trade Show, or CENTS, for short.  This is the show that specializes in trees, shrubs, perennials, and hardgoods like mulches and soils and remedies for what ails your plants.  We wandered the aisles absorbing the smells of the plants and soil– we need that about now. 

We are making decisions now about what new products we will be ordering and growing this year.  Spring is coming, only 57 days away.

Written by Lynn on the slope of Teasel Hill where it is snowy and not quite so cold.

I am sorry for the delay in posting.  We’ve been making some changes to the website, and the blog has been down for a few days.  We hope that we have solved the problem and there won’t be any more glitches in the system.

This time of mild winter won’t last for long, I fear, but we are taking advantage of it as much as possible.  Our landscape crew mulched the planting beds at the new Martins Ferry High School/Middle School/Grade School complex last week just in time for the grand opening. 

We’re working steadily on the web site, and getting it ready to enable sales online, and getting ready to upload care sheets for our most popular products.  You’ll be able to print these out for reference, or just refer to them as needed.  We’ve been painting and redoing displays, and the store is beginning to look less like Winter and more like Spring is on the way.

We’ll be looking at new plant material and hardgoods (especially natural solutions to your problems) at our first trade show of the season in Columbus.  And we’re making decisions about which new vegetables and flowering annuals we’ll include in our plant selections this year.  Busy, busy…

Written by Lynn on the slope of Teasel Hill on a dreary drizzly night. 

I made a great soup today, from the January 2008 issue of Bon Appetit Magazine.  It is spicy and thick, with lots of black beans and chicken.  I used the day to cook and bake and just hang out.  What a treat!

It is mild outside today, and it makes me think of Spring.  But I know there is a lot more winter to come, so I’ll be very patient before I get anxious to get started.

(If you like this food entry, visit my other blog, Basil and Butterscotch.)

Written by Lynn on the slope of Teasel Hill where the temperatures have moderated, and the furnace isn’t running, for once.

It’s Saturday, and the Garden Center is closed, and I don’t have anywhere I need to be until 4:00.  Bliss!  I’m reading my email, puttering around the house, reading seed catalogs, doing laundry and all those good jobs.  Tomorrow I’m going to bake all day.  Yes, I know I’m a Weight Watcher, but I can have one serving of whatever I make as long as I count the points.  And the rest will be taken to work for the hard-working staff as they complete the inventory. 

The inventory, by the way, which used to take us 2 weeks or more to complete, is almost done in three days!  I do so love our new POS system!  It makes everything quicker and more accurate, from receiving inventory through check-out, to the back-office stuff like inventory and bookkeeping.  We had a feeling when we were making the decision to spend the money on the system, that we would say, “Why didn’t we do this years ago?”  And that’s just what we are saying.

The next step after inventory will be tearing down displays and cleaning.  We need to refresh some areas like the restroom, and repaint some of the walls that didn’t get upgraded last year.  We want to look great for you when we open the doors up in March to say “welcome back!”

Written by Lynn on the slope of Teasel Hill where the temperatures are moderating (Yay!) and the day is laid back.