Dearly won from the garden centre

We went shopping today.  Admittedly only to the garden centre - but it made me realise that one result of the lockdowns has been to accentuate my antisocial tendencies - I no longer really enjoy interaction with random other people!  Just ahead of us as we entered the one way system was an older man in a wheelchair being pushed by a woman - probably his daughter - but they were also attempting to steer one of the two wheel "wheelbarrow/trolleys" favoured by garden centres - he was pushing the trolley, she was pushing the wheelchair.  He was wearing a mask around his chin!  Unsurprisingly, they struggled when they attempted to negotiate a narrow corner.

After finally getting round the corner, they then ground to a halt at some magnolia trees in pots, and offered us to go past.  One of the main reasons for our visit was to buy a magnolia stellata to replace the one that we have essentially killed by smothering it with echium*.  And they seemed to have difficulty realising that it was rather pointless waving us past, when they were standing beside the very plants that we wanted to look at!

Heyho.  We did actually find some other magnolia stellata trees elsewhere in the garden centre which suited us better - smaller, so cheaper.  In addition we bought some heuchera for down the passage to the back door, where we have removed two small trees that had been poorly chosen (by me) for a narrow bed.  And a couple of sempervivum for gaps in the boulder bed.

We were just SO pleased to get out of there.  And the whole trip left me feeling quite stressed for the rest of the afternoon.  I had to pander to my OCD by sorting seed beads into plastic film cannisters! 

*The main trunk is clearly dead; it does still have one small side branch with leaves, but there are more baby echium growing up around it, so I think it is really a write off.  We'll dig it up and put it in a pot - if it survives, we can no doubt find it a home.