AN UNCONDITIONAL APOLOGY TO THE MEMBERS, STAFF AND GOVERNING BOARD OF THE HARTLEY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, AS WELL AS TO A NUMBER OF OTHER PERSONS YET TO BE NAMED

I Am Sorry — in the fullest sense of that word: not the performative I am sorry, or even the so-ory (sorry-you-feel-that-way) kind of sorry but rather I am sorry because it has taken me a couple of days to come here and shed my cowardice; then had a difficult conversation with my wife — eventual tears on her part — about committing words to paper; followed by an extremely thick and cream-coloured missive from a solicitor, whose name I will not reproduce here but whose stationery did seem particularly impressive indeed and clearly whispered, however indirectly, through mighty pulp and ink combinations to suggest what was now going on: things have become serious.

This is a sad thing to read about the greenhouse.

And so I would like to begin with the greenhouse. The greenhouse is everything else — and I admit there is an everything else, but if you understand the greenhouse, I think you will come to understand, if not forgive what came next.

The greenhouse was not, originally at least, my own.

Let me be clear, that was something I realized at the time. The Society owns a greenhouse that it allows members to use between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, as noted in the Membership Handbook (rev. 2019) with which I am either familiar or only have had vis-à-vis my having been sent one Technically speaking, I used the greenhouse after permitted hours on the evening of the fourteenth when it was past six o'clock. I accept that. I accept it and I accepted it. I made a judgment call. If you listened to my reasons, I think you'd find them — if not compelling, then at least human.

I had a seedling. It was cold.

That is not the whole reason. I would argue it is part of the reason and I urge that fact be taken into consideration.

The seedling or bird of paradise, which I had been nursing since February in what my wife referred to as "a bit much" and I would refer to as meticulously controlled. It required warmth. The forecast that night was for chill temperatures which in my opinion would have crippled the plant. I had a key not an official one but I was lent one by Derek Foulkes in November for a different completely resolved issue and I opened the door.

I spent less than forty minutes in the greenhouse.

I disturbed nothing except the propagation bench, which I only slightly moved (and returned to approximately its original position). I know approximately is doing some heavy lifting in this sentence. The difference, I reckon is not more than four inches. Four inches approximate nothing for certain members– I long, and positively think of Margaret. I apologize for the four inches.

Other than that, here is my apology to the humidifier.

The humidifier was already on when I came. I did not start it. I want that on record. What I did do was to fiddle with the dial, because it seemed to me that the humidity was less than desirable (and hey — I admit — I was in a room that belonged to somebody else, manipulating equipment that wasn't mine, based on preferences that no one had solicited). That part I regret. What I didn't expect is when the dial went past a certain point it would make a noise. The noise was not loud. It was a kind of whirring. At the time I assumed that the whirring was par for the course.

It was not normal. The whirring was, apparently, the precursor to what Derek has now termed "cascade failure," which sounds a bit dramatic to me but as I understand it refers to an event in which one failure provides the opportunity for another failure and so on. Not being a technician, I cannot judge whether cascade failure is truly the correct name. So what I can say is that way by the end of my time in the greenhouse everything was — outwardly — okay.

I've since learned that the naked eye is not the right instrument.

It was on the morning of the sixteenth when I learned of the fuller situation: Derek had finally called me, and his potential new demeanour was one that I can only associate as "new. Derek had never talked to me that way in the fifteen years I have known him. It is the wheeze of a man who has found something and in real time chosen how much of it to confess. He said enough. He used the words misting system, the words overnight, and the words Carol's dahlias and I confess that my very first thought (internally not verbally) was: Why is a two-hundred-dollar plant going to survive after those $300.00 burrito-stealing raccoons just got done savaging it.

To even think that was an appropriate reaction, wrong again.

This had run the misting system all night due to some malfunction of the humidifier. That had also gotten to Carol's dahlias, the seed trays up on the top bench, the notebook that Margaret leaves beside the propagation bench for (and I quote Derek) "reasons she shouldn't have to explain", and a painting in watercolour of the original Society greenhouse (c. 1987) that's been hanging from an interior wall for reasons that are — as I've said before — obviously sentimental and would be obvious if anyone bothered looking around.

I had my chance to take a look around. I had never borne the watercolour some sort of sentiment. I filed it under minor and a little blurry. Thus far, I realize, faded might mean a great many things.

Lets me target the notebook first.

I know that the contents of the notebook are private, and that the whatever was in it (and I do not mean to imply I know, I have not asked, am not asking now) was for Margaret only and for water only — which means no one else. Sorry about the notebook. I apologize to the fact that the notebook is now a state of not really knowing what was inside, or if it even existed, or that any semblance at all of contents would only be half-works and have a tedious effort in enacting visible again through Margaret revisiting it in another context she did not choose. I do not know what was in it. I am sorry about it anyway. The biggest sorrie are for things you do not quite understand.

I am so {sorry} about the scheduling fight that followed (and I say this knowing what I have learned of my role in it over two weeks).

As I understand why this emergency meeting was there, everything happened because of the greenhouse incident. The question, in particular at the emergency meeting was whether there was a need to suspend my membership until the matter can be fully reviewed. Such a question came from Margaret (quite justifiably too). Rather unexpectedly, the question was seconded by Gerald — who I have always gotten on well with, and once successfully assisted in moving a fully grown wisteria through two counties without so much as a grumble. The wisteria aforementioned not a blackmail but a sort of context.

Things were said during the meeting. Some of them were said by me. My wife, and separately the solicitor, has told me not to repeat those things here, and I don't intend to. I will say that my comments regarding the Society's enforcement of membership were a product of feeling, not yet considered; and I very much regret what I said about Gerald having Wisteria.

I shouldn't have mentioned the wisteria like that.

It was a lonely road for the wisteria.

The days after the meeting saw a few things happen in an order I can hardly reconstruct perfectly well anymore. There were emails. The emails got a response. There was a reply to that response, I am told it "escalated" the tone but having read it again last night, I still believe it to be measured. There was a sub-committee. And then, as a bit of a new thing, there was the second letter from the solicitor — this one two pages long — and an extremely bad judgement call on my part to talk to a Hartley Gazette reporter.

What I did not know was that Hartley Gazette had a column called "Parish Squabbles."

I understand that now.

Apologies to my wife, who read the column at breakfast unprepared and whose face did various things before she put down the paper and said, very quietly, that she had to make a phone call.

My bad goes out to my neighbour Brian who features in this column only as a side note and unflattering way, who as far I can tell did nothing wrong, but who only came up because at the time I thought it could help me make my case when I referred to him as person who also values access to communal resources.

Since that column ran, Brian no longer waves at me. I miss the wave.

May I conclude with, the Strelitzia reginae.

It survived. The plant is fine. It sits on the kitchen windowsill and it looks — if I may say so! My wife does not view it regularly, but she never requested its removal, which I guess I'm plumbing to mean provisional acceptance.

I grew it from a seed in Feb. It is now eleven inches tall. There are still no flowers, and there will not be for a couple of years — the bird of paradise does not get in a hurry. It waits, it takes what is needed; traits I could use a little while to learn.

Sorry about the greenhouse. And I apologize for the dahlias and my notebook and the watercolour, and the wisteria (again) and Brian's wave, and the Hartley Gazette, and all of that second letter business, with its 'emergency meeting' stuff at an emergency about things said at an emergency -- but mostly I'm sorry about three weeks or so -- maybe a little more or less than that -- from around supper time on fourteenth with a rational conscience in winter.

I hope this letter finds you well.

I hope one day I can get back on the Tuesday rota.