AIBU to employ a secret gardener?

[catinboots]

LONG SORRY. Bit of a back story.

We have a huuuge veg plot. About 18'x6'. First year we moved here I was pregnant with DS2 and did the plot religiously. Marrows and mange tout all round. I was like fucking Barbara out of The Good Life.

Anyways, last two years I couldn't be arsed so it turned itself into a weed plot. Last autumn I swore to DH myself that I would do it come this spring.

So, DH dug it over, covered it with tarpaulin over winter, dug it over in spring, fertilised it. You get the idea.

I skipped down to the garden centre and bought a bunch of plantlings plantlets baby plants, and lovingly spent a weekend putting them all in. I've watered them, now they've grown out of control.

But the fucking plot is covered in weeds. Literally covered. Bindweed on my asparagus dudes. Bindweed.

DH keeps nagging me to weed it. But to be quite honest, I really cannot be fucking arsed.

I've found a little chappie in the village who has stuck his card in the shop window. He charges £12 an hour. I reckon he could get the job done and dusted in 2-3 hrs.

DH probably wouldn't give a shit. But a feel guilty for being a lazy, ungrateful fuck.

So.... AIBU to employ a secret gardener while DH is at work and take all the credit? I'll put soil under me fingernails and everyfink

Do it! I pay someone more than that just to cut the grass.

Gardener!

Yep. Do it.

But you're not paying Chappie because you're a lazy fuck. You're paying Chappie because you want to sustain the local economy. That £36 will be spent in the local shops, thus keeping the community alive and thriving. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think you're a living saint. You can tell your DH that.

Ok my god totally do it. You'd be creating employment. And that is a vair good thing

Make sure he does it properly though. Got to be thorough with bindweed or it'll be back...

Just do it. I fucking hate gardening. I would do it in a heartbeat.

Yes, do it.

DH and I were all excited when we first had a garden, some 12 years ago. We have long since abandoned any notions that we have green fingers (we don't, at all) and now pay someone to do it for us. We pay more than £12/hour, sounds cheap!

Go for it! You'd be keeping someone in employment. I love my gardener, without him there'd be a jungle outside my door.

In this heat I'd pay someone £36 to get me an ice lolly from the freezer if it meant I didn't have to get all hot and sweaty by standing up and moving, let alone sweating and swearing away in the garden just to get rid of weeds! YANBU to get a gardener, although YABU to have made me want an ice lolly just thinking about gardening, and there's nobody around to pay to get me one...

Put in high raised beds, netted, and irrigated, and you will find gardening really easy, no digging, no weeding, sow and harvest, real gardening joy,

all the best bits with none of the bits that are hard work.

and you can have a pimms bed. Thoroughly recommend a hammock near it

Do it! I once had a secret cleaning lady for a year and a half . A secret gardener is far more exciting .

Alan has just been booked to come at 10am on Tuesday for 3 hours.

I'm so excited

It's wrong, it's illicit, but it feels gooooood

Not if you live in a small village!!!!!!
the very next time he is in the local, your gardener is very likely to ask him how his marrows are doing?
And the postmistress will ask him if he is going to have the gardener back again, because he happens to be her cousins brother-in-law.
And the lady three doors up will ask if you've won the lottery.

Are you new to village life?

cat this has made me laugh I am having the exact same dilemma! It's just too much like hard work isn't it? Think I will give my guy a ing Monday and get him to come Wednesday morning before the kids brake up from school.

I've lived here for 12 years. 5 with DH. But he only ever frequents the Co-Op.

Do it.

OH doesn't know we have a cleaner. Not kiddin.

You may be safe then ..... the local Co-op here is nowhere near the gossip factory level of the PO!! or the farm shop, come to think of it.

Nah I'm on first name terms with village shop, butcher, baker candlestick maker

They wouldn't know DH from Adam. Despite him living in the next nearest village for 35 years and I'm a newbie from Lahndan

I have bindweed. I have read everything and waged a personal war against it. The consensus is that the best thing to do is move house because it will still be there after you are dead.

Pay the gardener enough to move next door to you and spend every waking moment killing it.

I'm not bitter, honest.

at all those with secret cleaners and gardeners.

I so wish I had thought of it!

YANBU to employ a gardener.

Bit weird to keep it a secret through, or secret cleaners, those who have them.