Retirement and gardening but not the way you think

They say nature abhors a vacuum. And so it was. The day dawned bright and clear and us without a care in the world (not actually true of course) and absolutely no plans or commitments for the day. A little gentle gardening perhaps? Oh joy! Then I got out of bed and the day began, and hence the term ‘belly up’ and ‘the day went’, were brought together in the same sentence. Our unclouded horizons lasted as long as it took for our gardeners (the ones we employ) to arrive at eight o’ clock. As all the company’s equipment is kept in our lock-up double garage, each day, that we are here in Leeds, begins and ends with the chaps collecting and returning their tools and maybe some latest information from those gardens out there and their work in them. Let me explain a little more.

As I think I’ve told you, number one son set up his own gardening business with some considerable investment from us. He’s been running it now for 6 or 7 years I guess, and he’s set up quite a substantial business. Then from out of the wide blue yonder he falls desperately in love with an Aussie woman and decides that’s where his future lies so he buggers off to Australia leaving us to run the business.

Now it is true we could have let the business go and shown no regard for the people it employed but we didn’t want to do this both morally but much more to do with the losing the money we had invested over those years. I won’t go into detail suffice it to say it was a substantial amount. So six weeks ago we took over the reigns of industry with some trepidation. We said we would run the business for six months and then review the situation. The judgement criteria was simple; stress v income. Too much of one and too little of the other (I’ll let you guess which way round that is) would mean the business would have to close whatever the consequences. We also wanted to keep the business going in case Oz didn’t work out for him and he had something to come back to and not have to start all over again. Given that he has now fallen desperately in love with an English, I want to say girl, but at 23 I guess I have to say woman, that could happen. She’s nice and is working, while studying, in our local pub which is where he met her, no surprises there. How this latest turn of events will impact on where he lives and the gardening business Gawd only knows. It’s certainly pointless trying to follow the saga let alone make any sense of it and definitely no point trying to predict the future. In the meantime we soldier on trying to run the business.

So, yes, we’ve been going six weeks, too soon to make any judgements but the stress v money equation looks something like this, so far. On paper we’re earning more than we pay out in wages but not by a huge amount but enough to satisfy us that this side of the equation is potentially viable. I say potentially because what the chaps earn on paper and what goes into the business account is not quite the same but hopefully over a period of time the actual money will go into the actual account and all will actually be well in the real as opposed to actual world.

The stress (you might simply call it effort) side of things, ie. the tasks we have to perform and the odd crisis, like the one we have today, looks something like this. Every Friday we, or rather Mrs Summerhouse, goes to the bank and takes out whatever amount is needed to cover the wages over and above what they have actually collected as they do the jobs (some people, admittedly rare, pay straight after the job has been completed, others pay by cheque, others by BACs whatever that is and some don’t pay at all but that’s a story for another time), so yes, some money is collected at the time. I can confidently say that, on the evidence of the first six weeks, they never have enough to pay the weekly wages but we live in hope and optimism. So that’s the main job along with checking whether certain customers have paid before we agree to any more work, paying for repairs of equipment that inevitably breaks. We also provide a continuous flow of invoices / bills for the customers. Mrs Summerhouse takes care of that side of the business while I do manly things like taking the trailer to the tip although that task may have been taken from me just because I couldn’t reverse the bloody trailer. Harsh I thought.

Incidentally, the crisis that invaded our tranquillity today is to do with the works van’s insurance. I won’t bore you with the details but there is a problem with our driver being insured or rather not insured. So far between son in OZ, the driver’s mother who does his insurance, his insurance company and no claims bonus, direct debits and an insurance company that won’t talk to me because of, wait for it, data bleedin’ protection, it has taken most of the morning to sort out – if it is sorted. We think it is but not until mid afternoon.

While worrying about the future of the business, perversely, I’d like to feel that this business is truly ours to do with what we think best. For example, I would like the new van to carry the company logo and when I feel confident that the business will continue I shall do this very thing. I’ve included a couple of images with a ‘mocked up’ logo so you get the idea. We also would like the business to be an all year round business and the way forward here, we think, is to try and get more into the landscaping side of things in that this kind of work can continue when the garden maintenance side of things has finished. Which brings us to garden design. Now Mrs Summerhouse has always had a hankering to extend her landscape painting skills into landscape design, a logical next step I think you will agree. She has even completed a landscape design course although that was some time ago but we have found an on-line course for her to work through and she’s enjoying it, so this could be a win-win development for the company. The only small cloud on the horizon might be getting the work. How do we present the company as a landscape design and landscaping company rather than simply a gardening company? Anyway that’s for a future blog.

So, retirement and setting up your own business. Some people make a business out of buying and selling stuff (EBay seems very popular) like I witnessed during the two auctions, virtual and real-life that I was a part of. This type of business wouldn’t suit me, for, while I am pretty good at buying stuff, witness the 5 guitars I bought, I am rubbish at selling anything. I can’t bear to let things go, some deep-seated form of insecurity I expect probably dating back to childhood when a bigger child took my toys. So that leaves me (us) with ‘our’ gardening business as our retirement venture with all of its plusses and minuses.

It’s a funny thing but before I retired I might have thought my retirement would be about gardening and golf. Well, gardening and golf, one hasn’t happened at all and the other is happening in a form that couldn’t have been predicted. As I’ve said before I think, this retirement age is a strange and wonderful thing.

Archie has just been sick on the carpet and I have to clean it up. That boy he’s a slave to his stomach and so are we. And the day started so well.