i'm bloody pissed off but should i be grateful?

[warthog]

i have just got back from hols.

i planted a rose bush about 2 months ago and have been watching a single beautiful, perfect bud grow that was clearly going to burst open while i was away. i was SO EXCITED to see the rose for the first time so imagine my shock to find it had been brutally chopped off!!!

and my beautiful red climber which is covered in roses has been chopped too!

aren't you supposed to prune roses in autumn anyway, AFTER the flowering season?

turns out my mil thought it would be a good idea and just did it. apparently she was planning on coming back today with a ladder to hack off prune the rest.

it's my garden! she's left a big pile of what were my beautiful roses in my recycling!! lovely big red flowers all dying in a plastic box!

i'm grateful that she came to check on the house. i do this for her when she's away. but can't she just chuck the post in the door and eff off? or should i be grateful that someone's done the pruning, albeit it 6 fucking months too early?

I'd be livid and have to ask why... in very clipped tones. Good luck,

My garden is my sanctuary and even (prune-happy) dh only gets grass duty!

well dh alerted her to possible stormy waters by gentle probing on the phone. she then dropped by for a cuppa and started out with a sort-of-apology, and i just managed to grunt a little.

so no show-down but i suspect she won't do it again. she was wailing about how dry the garden was so i wonder why she didn't water it instead of attempt to kill the plants.

hey ho.

Oh, I would cry my eyes out if that happened to me. I put some new roses in this year and have been watchig the buds every day, and if someone chopped them, I think it would be devastating.

So sorry.

you watch and wait for these things to happen in the garden

I expect you looked at it every single day with pleasure, waiting for it to flower

no wonder you are pissed off, I would probably cry if this happened to me

Grateful? I'd fucking prune her head off!

Oh, and TnOg, the Chelsea Chop is for hardy perennials like asters and phlox that otherwise get v.tall, and it just means that they get a little stockier and therefore less easily knocked over by wind/rain.

Is it just roses that she mutilates or is she against allflowers?

I have this bizarre image of her garden full of plants that have had all the flowers neatly chopped off...

Bloody hell my exmil did exactly this kind of thing only ONCE though
I was so looking forward to seeing the honeysuckle climbing over my wall and a few other flowering plants after I had been away.
ex told me that his dm had 'tidied' up a bit in the garden but when got home it was an empty desert!!!
I'n kidding, nothing in it at all. just a trim lawn and two bare brown earth patches.
Everthing was cleared!! she painted the wall a bright white which emphasised the loss of the honeysuckle.
I was livid and told ex but all he said was I should be grateful for the all the help I had from her and then turned it into a 'funny story'
Ha bloody Ha

well it seems that we have differing ideas of dead-heading.

to me dead-heading means chopping the flower off and maybe a couple of leaves. to her it means at least a foot of growth, more if you can manage.

she says the new rose was dead so she thought it was ok. but it wasn't dead, cos i found it's carcass - it might have been a day over fully open. there is still a lot of colour in the petals and the edges aren't shrivelled or anything.

ok. i know i should get over this now.

let's hope the underlying froideur has made it's mark and the incident not repeated.

thanks for all your support - i can't believe how upset i am!

I would be livid! I can understand maybe being a bit green-fingered and doing a bit of weeding but to chop off roses and prune bushes??

I would have to speak to her I am afraid..but then I have never been known for keeping my mouth shut!

Oh, poor you. I would be so sad, and your garden sounds beautiful.

But - actually, this rings alarm bells for me a bit. The first signs that something was really wrong with my granny (other than the usual 'just eccentric' stuff) was that she started doing things like this. It might be worth just checking she's not confused and thinking it's spring and pruning time - or confused about what you're meant to do with flowers. Don't want to worry you but equally I'd hate to see you simply seethe at her if she's actually beginning to be seriously not right.

I feel your pain.
My dad did the same to my mature flowering MASSIVE climber several years ago. He killed it. I still shudder when I remember it