A gardener goes for holiday in the sun....

Before the holiday:

The gardener searches for a hotel with a garden. Oh yes, and a pool.
The gardener emails the hotel to ask what they have in the garden and is slightly puzzled to get a reply "flowers and trees".
The gardener books a hotel (with a garden) in a resort which has a famous botanical garden nearby. Oh yes, and a beach.

The gardener arranges a watering rota with neighbours and relatives, and prints out an emergency call tree. The gardener pins laminated "special care"- instructions on the pots of special plants and creates an Excel sheet to show each task needed from the Waterer of the day. The gardener learns conditional formatting so that every time a task is completed and ticked in the spreadsheet by the Waterer, the spreadsheet cell automatically turns green. Any outages feed directly to the phone of the Waterer and the gardener.

2 weeks before the holiday the gardener emails the hotel to ask if their Plumbagos are expected to still be in full bloom at the time they arrive and if they could arrange a webcam to check the progress of the maturation of the Opuntia fruit. The OH adds a line to ask if they have gluten- free dishes in the buffet for the coeliacic family member.

During the holiday:
The gardener asks the transfer bus to be stopped twice during the 1 hour journey from the airport to take photos of the incredible Opuntias and the quite interesting shade of Oleanders between the highway lanes- is this a natural hybrid?

75% of the holiday photos do not have a person nor a building in them.

The gardener collects seedpods and buys seeds from the local market. During the flight home the gardener realises that it is probably illegal to smuggle plants from abroad and starts to panic and to sweat profusely.

The gardener gets through the customs but then understands that introducing foreign plants into a British garden might not, in the end, be a very good idea. The gardener arranges the seedpods into a glass vitrine in the lounge. Something to talk about when you have visitors!

Arriving home:
The gardener pays the taxi, gets the bags in, waters the plants in containers, puts in an additional stake for the lilies, changes the baby's nappy and makes a cup of tea. Home at last!


Greetings from a holiday in Spain

 

Welcome back.

Look forward to the pics.

 

But, did your laminates and Spreadsheet instructions work for the "Waterer"?

 

You GO on holiday and entrust care of your plants to OTHERS?

 

Don't waste them - send them to me!!!

 

Why were you so concerned about the Plumbagos?
Glad you had a great time.

 

Personally, I find the whole incident bizzare. Is this the 'new Brits abroad' ?