It’ll be hard to share trivia with you without telling you Famous Wholesale Nursery’s secrets, but I’m going to give it a shot.
1. I pruned 630 five-gallon boxwoods. Did you hear me? 630. By hand. With heavy tijeras grandes. In the hot sun. For eight hours. I rule.
2. If you are the kind of person who can’t pee in a port-a-potty, or can pee but only if a stable hover can be accomplished, you just haven’t been in the right situation to consummate your relationship with the outhouse. When you’re finally tired enough that you’ll sit down damn near anywhere – nay, you will lie on the gravel road to rest your back for a moment – it is then that you will happily sit on the port-a-potty seat and not give splash-up a second thought.
3. Incidentally, I suspect that careful splash physics calculations have been worked in an effort to ensure that you don’t leave the potty with a chemical blue stain on your hiney. I want to meet the people who did those calculations, and I want to discuss the assumptions and variables therein.
4. If you haven’t ridden in the back of a pick up truck recently, it’s hellafun.
5. Hard labor and little sleep have beaten me into a sweet state of reasonableness and giddiness. If you want something from me, now’s the time to ask.
6. One of the most common ways to die in an agriculture setting is drowning in the irrigation pond.
7. Conifers can take 8-13 years in the production cycle – from propagation to ready for sale – the reason for their often high prices.
8. By the time plants leave the wholesale nursery bound for retail stores, wholesalers, and landscapers, the cost to produce them is known to the penny. They have been handled and worked on a minimum of 15 times, not including feeding, spraying or irrigation.
9. The margin for perennials, shrubs, and trees is a lot smaller than I thought: somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-25%.
10. It’s amazing how hideous plants look at various points in the production cycle. I’ve only been acquainted with this company’s plants on the retail end, and they came out of the truck looking practically extruded they were so perfect and unblemished. In the field, they often look utterly dreadful. There’s a lot of primping and fussing in the last few weeks before they are shipped.
11. Labor that includes stooping, bending over, and lifting hurts really bad after the first 30 minutes or so. It’s bad for about an hour, then it comes and goes. If you can get through the periods of abject misery, they become fewer and farther between and suddenly, you’re in the zone. Ridiculously, it feels like an accomplishment.
12. Listen up heat sensitive folks. It’s counter-intuitive, but being completely covered lowers your temperature considerably. Long pants, a wide brimmed hat, and a light colored, long sleeved shirt over a thin t-shirt are salva vidas. You’ll still need sunscreen and plenty of water, but the coverage helps immensely.
13. Before straining your back and working harder than you thought possible, stock up on frozen vegetables and apply them to said body part the instant you arrive home. Take analgesics preemptively.
14. I’ve never been more convinced that graduate school is in my future.
Well done! Reminds me of a time when I truly believed that what I was told, by HR types etc., was gospel. But it turned out that those folks are salespeople and a salesman will say anything to get a sale and look good to their bosses. That is why I always write down the info as it comes and when the pitch is concluded I ask the pitchman if the “following things you said are correct as I have noted them.”
I also have had some jobs not to be bragged about, however, they were done in aid of doing the things that I really liked and deserved my time.
I don’t think that this is going to be profound but here goes anyway.
There aren’t any jobs that find “the spot” and then massage it. They can be the gateway to accomplishment and real knowledge but once thru’ the gate you have to decide to go on or find a different, and possibly easier, path.
My years, of digging to find the pony, have yielded naught but a pension and time to try to understand what I did for 55, count them, 55 years working. Here is what I finally understand. I did what the Bible said I would do, which is to live by the sweat of my brow. After the sweaty time, almost always, came a time of renewal and comfort – a time, just by comparison – when I could look forward to what my sweaty time had gotten for me.
Your preparation for what will come is the most valuable (by that I mean your commitment to learning all that you can about the things that have meaning, depth, and enjoyment) is the smartest, and best, approach that you can have. Pursue that power with all your might. Don’t forget yourself, in that pursuit.
I’ve rambled enough. Love, yer dad