Grumbles about gardening

A few weeks ago, my mother indicated that she wanted some cucumber seeds. So I went to the Reject Shop to buy some (as Bunnings and other hardware & gardening supply stores are all closed, the Reject Shop is the only place which seems to be both open and have vegetable seeds for sale).

Sadly, they were sold out, so I went to Plan B, and went online. The Bunnings website is not exactly the most easily navigable, and I get the impression that they are not really into home delivery anyway, so I quickly abandoned them and went to Amazon (not a site I am keen on, given that Amazon are reputed to be an appalling employer and who wants to enable them to become a monopoly retailer anyway).

So I ordered a pack of 5 different types of heirloom cucumber seeds

According to my order history, they were ordered on 18 September, and they were expected to arrive by 30 September.

Well, it is 4 October now, and the only details onside are ‘Your package was probably delivered as we expected it to arrive by now.’ In the meantime, Amazon have started spamming me to write customer reviews of that product, on that latter expectation.

[Whilst grumbling about Amazon, I might as well mention that I ordered a particular mask (why can’t Australian retailers adapt and sell decent masks inshore?) on 25 July, and it is expected in the next week. Why it took several weeks to actually ‘ship’ does mystify me.]

The inability to readily obtain vegetable seeds at the moment does get me wondering. Why don’t the supermarkets stock some of that stuff in their minuscule gardening sections? You could say that it might encourage people to grow their own instead of buying from the fruit and veg section of the store, but why then do supermarkets sell flour and cake mix as well as bread and cake?

Anyway, it is spring and people like to be out and about. Much as I like binging on Netflix etc, gardening is one of the things which makes lockdown that much more bearable, and ready access to the right vegetable seeds would make it more so.