Every spring it happens – the wind arrives. It has coincided with the warmest day of the season today, so it has been truly hateful outside. It was so bad that mid-morning I couldn’t even go outside as it was impossible to walk in the gale.
It has moderated a little now and I have spent 2 hours outside watering and trying to convince the potatoes that they really can stand up again – at the moment they have been blown flat. If they recover (I am sure they will) I think I will get a very early crop from them – they are all about to flower now. Hopefully then I can get in a second crop before winter next year.
I bought two more kilo of the pickling onions while they are still available and pickled them yesterday. Yum. I now have six kilo laid down as pickles and they look soooooo nice. I don’t know how I can keep myself from them for the next month or so while they mature.
Moving on … Diggers is an Australian institution. For years it has provided heritage seeds and plants when few other people were doing it – kudos to them for doing that. Subsequently it has grown into a big enterprise, taking the high moral ground on things like genetic modification etc. All of which I agree with, but, by God, I am afraid I am going to let my membership lapse and I will not buy from them again. I have to admit I have been scaling down my orders from them over the past few years since I discovered The Lost Seed, but after the experience with my last order, no more Diggers for me.
I had ordered a fairly large order for me. When it arrived here, it arrived with most of the items missing and no note to explain why. (Curiously, the packing slip had the word PIG scrawled across the bottom of it, but I am choosing to believe this was the person (!) who packed the order … not what Digger’s personally thought of me.)
Diggers failed to answer any of the emails I sent regarding the missing part of the order, for which they were happy to accept my money. Not a single email I have sent about all the missing items, or their lack of customer service, has been answered.
When I finally telephoned I was assured that the missing items would eventually be sent, but that took weeks. (There was apparently no problem with supply … only with the packing.)
For a company who takes the high and mighty ground and beats its moralistic chest at every opportunity, it sure takes a strange attitude to its customers. I have been feeling discontented with them for a while now – this last experience was just the straw on the poor old camel’s back. I was left with the feeling that I didn’t matter very much to them.
Oh well, I expect I will recover eventually from the rejection. 
I shan’t expect they’ll miss me very much. The Lost Seed, on the other hand, is still small enough to treasure their customers, so I will happily transfer Nonsuch’s business to them in future.