Share the pain of a gardening 'incident'

[SleepyHedgehog]

Any disasters that only really get the right reaction from another gardener welcome!

Mine is this:
I have been mooching thinning out unwanted plants, DH merrily managing his composting zone in the background. I made a separate pile for the horsetail to be burned/banished from the premises, been doing this for a few years and it's manageable currently but have to keep an eye out.
Me 'DH where's the separate pile gone?'
DH 'Oh I've shredded everything for you and turned the compost heap'. *horror movie music plays

My kids were terrors for decapitating flowers as toddlers. Must be genetic, as they were both under a weird compulsion. Ds1 had got to every single daffodil in my flower bed. There was still one beautiful tulip that had popped up in the middle of the lawn and I had carefully mowed around it. Of course he was faster than me and murdered it the second my back was turned.

I have also done the rake thing and it hurt! Killed a mower by mowing over the cable, but luckily dp was able to replace it. I ALWAYS wear full shoes and leg coverings when mowing or strimming. The strimming wire hitting leggings is a lot less painful than it would have been on bare legs.

@NeverDropYourMooncup I feel your pain!

We still don't talk about the Camellia Incident. Suffice to say that I have never let DH loose in the garden again except to cut the grass.

Rosie’s Walk, one of my favourite books as a child.

I hope your son is okay now!

I have had a wheeled low seat for thirty years, it is excellent for weeding and sowing, minimises bending over or kneeling. I actually have three now, one for each part of the garden. I thoroughly recommend them.

Except….don’t get wheely happy and give a cheerful push backwards whilst sitting on the seat, to celebrate finishing weeding the central pebble bed. Because if you do, the seat may slide out from under you, and you will land on your bum on said pebbles , thus BREAKIng your coccyx and making car journeys of more than fifteen minutes a torture worthy of the Spanish Inquisition.

It takes about three months to heal . ‘There’s nothing we can do about it I’m afraid’ ( GP)

I had the rake thing drilled into me from an early age too, I didn't know there was a Simpsons storyline.

Yes to wearing proper protection when mowing and strimming, a bit of strimming wire flew off and hit my leg through jogging bottoms a couple of months ago, it left a really bad bruise (more like a blood blister) which has left a red blotch of a scar right in the middle of my shin, hoping it will fade in time, it would have been much worse with bare legs.

Thankfully currently only person in my garden but have ‘tidy’ relatives who consistently want me to ‘golf course green’ my teeny strip of lawn of all it’s lovely bee friendly clover

I caved over my gorgeous (but to them ‘untidy’) ox daisies & pulled a lot out - cue influx of horsetail that had been kept at bay by daisy cover 😭

Hoping next year the daisies crowd back & under no circumstances will I be caving again….

(but their advice on holly tree was sound - bare feet & hollies DO NOT MIX - but too late now I have rose & honeysuckle growing through it 😬)

On the subject of protection, I once poked myself in the eye - not with a stick but just a tough grass stem. Minor injuries unit, I think there's a bit of permanent damage as that eye has been sensitive ever after. Technically I was conservation volunteering not gardening but it's the same sort of thing and it's safety glasses on for anything more than languid deadheading.

I don't think we've had many plant disasters - I mean I expect most DH's have helpfully pulled out 'bindweed' with no idea it was actually a lovely white clematis, right?

Admired the 3 foot high cane 'fence' we'd made with added string, to keep dogs off seedlings. Soon after, bent to pick a weed, cane in eye. Had horror film blood eye for a week, but could have been worse. Have also trod on rakes annually and always manage to get spades in my shins monthly. Bastard stinging nettles weekly and random sharp shit in my clogs daily

Not gardening, but vegetation related, was doing my work experience on a farm and riding in the land rover, window open, a branch got semi stuck and then twanged my ear like a evil green whip. To this day, it's the 3rd worse pain of my life

You've not lived until you've been weeding and found a nest of rattlesnake babies...

And then wonder where the mommy is, no doubt?!

Fortunately most of us are in the U.K. where we have generally more benign fauna and flora than many other countries (no poison Ivy either, or seriously venomous spiders) - we sometimes forget how lucky we are in that regard.

This is my walking garden disaster, so many plants lost. Including a beautiful passion flower that I had just got to the point where it covered a whole section of trellis screening us from the student neighbours ( no objections to students but just like some privacy). She does not know the difference between stick and stem and has very sharp teeth.
My garden now looks like a POW camp as I've got fences and wire round everything!

I stepped on a rake when I was a child that one of my parents had left lying in some ankle height weeds. It went part of the way through my toe. Had to get a tetanus shot.

My DH did something very similar. "Oh, there was a brambley thing that had fallen on the lawn, I went over it with the lawnmower too, makes life a bit easier in terms of cutting it back".

Oh yeah. My rambling rose that I'd carefully cultivated through a garden renovation which was doing so well it needed tying back in 😭😭😭

My ex sprayed everywhere with weed killer once killed all the plants. ‘Well it says weed killer I didn’t think it would kill plants only weeds ‘ 🙄

I was complaining that my husband could never do a job without calling me after five minutes to watch him. He harrumphed that he was going to mow the lawn - for the first time ever - without doing that. Five minutes later, I heard a wail, went out rolling my eyes...

He'd stepped on rusty nail, right through his rubber shoe into his foot, I had to take him for a tetanus shot...

🤦‍♀️

Don't believe you. That dog can do no wrong. You must be doing it yourself and blaming her. 🐕‍🦺

While pruning over the winter I carefully separated off all the long straight lengths to use as pea sticks. I trimmed off side shoots and left them all together in a neat bundle.

My husband, who had previously shown zero interest in the garden, merrily chopped them all up into tiny tiny pieces and composted them. Then he volunteered to do some weeding 😬

I’m almost crying on your behalf.
I can’t count the times DH has done things like this. He doesn’t give any warning, I just come home to find he’s “cut back” or “tidied up” something, meaning he’s cut a shrub into a stumpy cube, randomly hacked off branches, or pulled something up because he thought it was “a weed”. A photo of one of his masterpieces is on another thread. I’ve realised he thinks everything is like a hedge. No idea why but he thinks all shrubs and trees are meant to have a flat-top haircut and straight sides. He actually believes they look good after he’s mutilated them.

It doesn’t matter how many times I explain things, don’t touch these please, the ones here with the frilly leaves, they’re not weeds; don’t “prune” that because it won’t grow back; it makes no difference. He just cannot take it in.

Once he cut all the leaves off my greenhouse tomato plants. I’d been talking about side-shooting, and when I was out he thought he’d help by doing it for me. He was most upset at my utter tearful horror. Luckily he’s never touched a tomato plant ever again.

Looking at this thread I see that there are quite simply people who just don’t get it about plants. It isn’t just disinterest, it’s an inability to understand them, even at a basic level.

I laughing at all your stories wondering what I'm going to do in my new 1/4 acre mature garden.....I'm so excited, but very scared at the same time!!!

Your dog is absolutely gorgeous! 😍
And she looks like butter wouldn't melt

My beloved garden became neglected. After DH died I lost heart for it and frankly hand enough on my plate just keeping on keeping on.

This year I decided enough is enough and I need to get it back into shape. DS offered to help and set about cleaning the brambles from the hedge.

I came home to find a much neater hedge, but also that my beautiful climbing rose has gone.

Where do these men come from? I've got one! Studiously forgets anything I ask him to do in the garden (except cutting the grass, or using any other "man" tools) but then, after decades of inaction, suddenly decides to weed out the passion flower, prune the magnolia, run the strimmer over the raised bed.
I imagine one of those brainwave detectors, where a portion of brain lies dormant for years and the needle rests motionless, then suddenly the detector registers a massive blip, then it returns to dormant for the next few years... Yes I've probably watched too many old sci-fi B movies 😁

Haha @Gloaminggnome . My DH knows I hate bonfires, so waited till I was away to "tidy up" all my beautiful hazel pea sticks 😡😡😭