dont know if this was ever posted but I got the idea from a survey I took the other day. it reminded me of the time a few years ago when hubby was trying to attach string to our second floor roof so that my moon flowers could grow up them, and fell. actually, he fell three stories, cause we have a basement and that side of the house has an embankment because of it. thankfully he only injured an ankle. it was pretty funny, actually,......he swore all the way down!!

:0] :0]

G'ann

Gosh he was lucky! I'm so scared of heights, I know that will never happen to me, cause I'll never get up that high!
My least favorite task is weeding, of course. That's why I try to plant ground cover everywhere there's a little bare earth. Ann

Watching the deer eat the plants in the winter. I know they are having another rough winter here in the mountains(Poor crop of the acrons, etc. that deer eat) I hate for them to go hungry, but I hate to see them eat MY plants. What a choice.

I was putting water lily baskets in our very large farmpond in May of 96. The water was so cold I decided to wear my jogging suit in. The waterlogged bottoms of the suitproceeded to fall down around my ankles at the same timethe Forester was pulling in the drive!!! He had paid a visit to inquire about the beaver that was in the pond!!
I am a very 90's woman and own a bar but my face must haveturned 100 shades of red!! He didn't even hang around long enough to check out the trees that the beaver haddamaged!! Just goes to show "ya- anyone of us gardenerscould end up looking like those wooden fat-butted yardthings!!

ohhhh Gail, that's tooo good!! just the kind of thing you wish you had on tape, right? take heart, it could have been your minister!. LOL

G'ann

1. Renting and using a jackhammer to break up a vein of rock around the foundation of the house. Probably have some residual organ damage from that one.
2. Taking my husband to the emergency room when he "kissed" his leg with the chainsaw helping a friend remove a tree.
3. Creating a large mulched bed when the temps were 98 degrees Farenheit.

Getting rid of the d@%ned wild rose bush that is strangling many of the trees in my woods. It is so big s0metimes 40' and vigorous and thorny. and then it has to be disposed of gnarl gnarl gnash gnash. But I hope the trees are happy. The rose bush has conributed greatly to the demise of several of them.

Digging up a perennial bed yet again because the twitch grass has invaded over the last couple of summers. I'm so-o-o-o-o tired of fighting it.

Well, there's the time I brought those lovely white iris from my aunt's house. They had this little poision ivy vine growing among them, and I thought I had gotten rid of it, but I guess I missed some of the roots. . . A little bit of that stuff, properly applied, goes a long way, believe me!

My ongoing least favorite gardening experience, though, is breaking up the machinery-packed Georgia red (actually, it's bright orange) clay out by the road. Nothing but a big railroad pick will even touch the stuff. My maddock (a heavy old one, not one of those lightweight things you normally find in gardening centers) literally bounces off. People just stop and stare. :)

Picking some celery right from the garden and biting into a slug!

Trying to get rid of ivy. Almost impossible, back breaking and frustrating.

In order from worst to most tolerable:

1. Having the vegetable garden vandalized just as it was was startin to bear fruit--every single plant was meticulously pulled up and set on the ground right where it was pulled from.

2. Having the city bulldoze my vegetable garden.

3. Having the city mow my vegetable garden with brush hogs--they were just going through the neighborhood "clearing" every "vacant" lot in the name of city beautification.

4. Having the city spread defoliant on all those same vacant lots, with me just barely getting there in time to have my own garden spared.

5. Getting carpel tunnel syndrome from digging out the above garden with a pick axe and tire iron and removing from the soil the remains of the razed house that used to be on the lot.

6. Having some rude neighbors repeatedly, over the last 5 years, drive their cars through the flower bed I maintain for the enjoyment of all in the tree lined parkway on our block.

7. Having a neighbor who despised my "hill-billy ways" dump the contents of an undersink greasetrap onto my compost pile.

8. Chopping my foot with a spade.

9. Having vandals break a couple of beautiful, handmade pots that were in my front window.

10. Having my new neighbor ask me to cut my cleome because she wished to hang her clothes to dry on a clothesline which is on the property line and the wind would blow my cleome onto her clothes.

11. Stepping barefoot on slugs.

Still, I am not discouraged. What's the bother of a few little slimey slugs in the lifetime of a gardener? Oh, I guess I shouldn't talk about city workers and vandals that way.

Clare! Move away from that place!!!

My least favorite gardening experience is the wind's effect on my plants, which blows constantly here in northwest Kansas, whipping everything ragged. Or the thunderstorms which bring large hail. Or fighting the bindweed. Or the field mice. Or the large jack rabbits. But most of all, it is the crop dusters spraying herbicide on windy days.

Maybe I will move, too, Clare!

weeds, stepping into a nest of those little bees while pulling up garlic, eating broccoli and find a cabbage looper I missed when boiling it, trying to have a natural garden setting to have the wild animals come around and then having to chase them away when they go after my plants, and eating lettuce from my garden that I can't get off all the dirt.

Stepping barefoot on slugs, bounding up on garter snakes (I know, but they still scare the h3ll out of me!), the 2 dogs living in the back yard who have NO respect for my efforts!

Clare, I would move! BTW did you own the "vacant" lot you gardened on? If so, I would most definitely have raised a BIG stink!!! When I was a child we lived in a rural area, and Daddy dabbled in dwarf fruit trees....he planted a peach tree and a couple of years later, the 1st peach appeared! There was only one, and we watched breathlessly as it ripened, and finally one night Daddy said that we'd let the peach stay on the tree 1 more day and the next night, after supper we'd all have a slice of that peach!! Well, the next day the county road crew mowed the roadside "weeds".....at noon, the tractor stopped in the shade by the house, and the man got down to eat his lunch....he finished, stood up and picked OUR PEACH and ATE IT!!! We went and told Mama, and she came out and confronted the man as he got back on the tractor....he looked at her and started the tractor and took off MOWING our little tree to the ground!!! You don't mess with my mama...she took the little tree to the Co. Judge's office and wound up getting another tree and a bushel of peaches. Small satisfaction.

Helping a neighbor remove dead Rose of Sharon trees in 115 degree heat index. Thought I was gonna die!

Watching cats dig and use my flowerbeds for litter boxes (not my cats, either!!!).

Having neighbor's weeds invade thru the fence on MY flowerbeds and having to jump to their side of the fence to help them with their weeding....

Traci

Finding big, ugly, scary creepy-crawlies! Yuck! Yuck! Shudder!

Alia

Discovering I've planted the wrong plant in the wrong place. i.e. Hibiscus bush in a tiny bed near driveway, wild phlox in front of house, they've taken over, large mock orange shrub in front of house, having to move everything around until it's right, then start over again. well, it's kind of fun I guess.

Hubby had the %$#@! idea of cutting down a 20 yr old dead Arizona Ash tree in August...heat index was well over 100 degrees...I break out in a pool of sweat jusst thinking about it!

I have been putting off the removal of turf from the area between the road and the sidewalk, I want to fill it with rubarb and rocks and have sucessfully put it off for two years so far. It likely won't be as bad as I feel, maybe next Sat.....?

The time I was poking a bulb in my bare hand, trying to figure out what kind it was, and it unrolled into a big slimy grub!

1. Trying to get a very stubborn skunk out from under my shed. The war was long, the stench was hard, the ravages were widespread; one casualty.
2. After a long hard day gardening during a heat wave, snuggling up to my hubby between nice cool sheets... and then an earwig fell from the ceiling onto my pillow. Hoooold me back!

Without a shadow of a doubt, the April day I awoke to find the overnight temperature had dropped from the mid thirties we had been having down to a frigid 7 below zero and since I had been only using a little electric heater in my greenhouse, every single seedling was dead - over 2500! Very, very depressing. Almost gave up gardening.

Ellen- I can sympathise with loosing your heat. We lost ours a few weeks ago and was also in the single digits. I made my hubby tack up blankets in front of the kitchen door, and then at five in the morning, we piled every flat full of seedlings into the kitchen in front of the nice warm gas (thank god) stove so they would not freeze.
I have had a few bad gardening experiences. 1. I am always squashing wormies with my hands and I really hATE that. Yick.
2. We had a huge swarm of ground bees invade our yard. Nothing that a little gasoline will not fix. ( i hateed to do it, but baby and I are allergic to stings- and they were pissed from the beginning!!!) 3. My landlords stupid brother killed several of my plants while trying to put in a new furnace ( not to mention the fact that he left garbage all over my lawn!!) 4. I lost the only two trees I had to insects this year, so there is no shady place to sit.

Being barefoot out in the rose garden and stepping in dog doo! Gag me with a spoon!! NancyLouise

I just did it today: The Seedling Grim Reaper. I try to pry them apart, but sometimes you just have to snip snip. We call them our "babies" for a reason. I thought I'd make a good thing out of it and feed the carcasses to my plant-crazy cat. She threw them up in three different places. At least I got to listen to that great "cat is turning inside out" sound.

Cats (not mine) hiding in my flower bed (near the bird feeder) and my dog discovering them there. I have had to replant my flower bed many times because my dog barks at the cats, the cats scramble out of the flowerbed and tear up everything (my dog knows better than to step foot in my flowerbed). Finally threatened to give my neighbor a bill to replace my flowerbed - she got rid of the cats.

Wow, my least favorite exprience is downright sad after reading about slugs(not a problem), cats(have 3, love them), poison ivy (no), and such. I really hate waiting and waiting for plants in the mail to come. Impatience is my middle name. I've also been known to go out and dig up plants to see if they are really growing and do routine checks of every plant and flower almost every day. I also dislike cold weather because my arthritis acts up and love gardening in the heat. Good thing I live in the desert.

Trying to remove a blackberry bush that the previous person had cleverly planted along the fence behind the rose bushes. OUCH! Never did get rid of the thing. Undiluted Round-up was no match for that.

Second thing, coming home from work to find the neighborhood 5 year old twins had pulled up every one of my flowers and threw them all over the yard, because? "I don't know, whine whine"

Chopping worms in half when digging holes to plant. YUCK! Watching the June bugs come out of the dirt at dusk! YUCK!
Dealing with GRASS, Bermuda to be specific. It's a MONSTER!

Standing barefoot in the black eyed pea patch in July pulling sand spurs and simultaniously winding up with one foot in a fire ant mound and bumping an unseen purple wasp nest........not happy making.

Armadillos....They used to dig everything in the garden up, it`s amazing how much damage they can do in one night. They can`t get into the garden any more, now they dig all over the yard. If they would just replace the rocks, it wouldn`t be so bad.

Well, I have two...
1) Discovering a slug in my hair while gardening in my front yard. After doing the head shaking, jumping, shuddering and face making routine, I noticed lots of cars driving by, and all the drivers had BIG grins on their faces!

2) I ordered over two hundred bulbs for a new bed I had carefully tilled and fertilized in our back yard. I carefully planted them and had a beautiful spring display. Then my husband informed me that the plans for the deck expansion would be right over my new bed! Oh, well, I guess I can dig them up!

Oh God, a SLUG!! ... shudder ... Last night, I thought I'd disovered a slug on our dog, as I was petting him in the kitchen I touched it. So I jumped up out of my chair and began shrieking (unheard of for me) and jumping and shuddering, the whole time the dog is getting more excited at our new "game," he jumped up on my chair and was trying to jump on me and get closer, and I'm screaming "get him away get him away." It turned out to just be a dead earthworm he'd rolled in, and I was very embarrassed (so of course I'm sharing this with the world now).

I do this every year. Our springs are absolutely heavenly, and I find myself buying more large pots for the patio, getting more hanging baskets of trailing beauties, and digging out new beds for ever more perennials. I spend every weekend in the spring digging, planting, and dreaming of the beauty to come. Then summer arrives with temperatures of 95 every day and 80% humidity. The pots need water, the beds need water, and guess who wants to drink iced tea in the air conditioned den and pray for rain!

My ongoing battle is with our squirrels. We have 8 ancient pecan trees that have been bearing in abundance for years. The squirrels bury as many pecans as they can, so we have pesky, hard to pull up little pecan trees growing everywhere. Sometimes the squirrels seem to get into a digging mode and make holes in any fresh dirt, like anything newly planted. I have to make the rounds every day to replant what they have uprooted. They even dug holes in a hanging pot of impatiens that was suspended on a 5' chain. Don't tell me they are cute ##**!!

1: Fighting quack grass. Endless.
2: Discovering how big a rugosa rose gets-and how much it suckers and now trying to remove it.
3: (Drumroll, please) Breaking up clumps of soil with my hands while planting and grabbing and squeezing a CAT TURD!!! Gag, vomit, die! Spend next hour sterilizing hands!

Babying my first three rose bushes and as soon as they had their first blooms, overnight the Japanese beetles camped out on the bushes, totally stripping them down to nothing. How very depressing to a new rose gardener...

Yes,the roses (miniatures) that have suffered from the japanese beetles, etc. They were so beautiful a couple weeks ago, while we still had cooler days and rain. It is sad! I just sprayed mine finally, today. I hated to, because of the bees and maybe ladybugs. Had an angry bee get underneath my shirt (had a sleevless top on), as I must have picked him up on a weed from the ground when I was pulling some weeds. I must have pinched him, and he was MAD! He stung me in my armpit. I danced and then, got into the back door of the cellar, and off came the shirt--in a hurry! Oh well, thank goodness i am not allergic.

Yow...glad he wasn't hurt. It reminds me of a story from a relative in Florida. It was right before Halloween, and her hubby was out on the porch stringing spooky ghost shaped lights out there. She hears him making a loud squeal like, "OOOOOOOHhhhhhhhhhhh!", and she sarcastically yells out, "David, quit being an idiot....acting like a ghost...like I'm REALLY scared...gimme a break". It turns out one of the bulbs had a short, and he was being electrocuted (he's fine) and that was the only sound he could produce at the time!

Winter, having to carry in plants a 10pm because the temp is going from 88 to 30 in the next hour. The dog burying his bones in the freshly dug & planted bed. Pulling weeds & grabbing slugs or crushing snails in a handful. Gross!! Worse, pouring salt onto a slug! Yuck!

This place is good for the soul, but not the ribs. Mine are killing me from so much laughing. The worst experience I had gardening, was while pruning my apple tree, my dear husband calls my name, i turn just as I am cutting, and cut my finger instead. But at least my brain was paying attention, because my hand stopped when the pruners hit bone. So like a good girl I go get a tetnus shot, and they don't tell me it has diptheria vaccine too, so 8 hours later I am at the emergency room, with my arm swollen to the elbow. Now I listen to no one while pruning.

The worst thing that ever happened to my husband, was one time he was walking through a patch of clover. When all of a sudden he he was hopping on one foot, cussing like a mad man, while trying to pull his shoe off. Come to find out, he had scooped a yellow jacket up under the tongue of his shoe. It managed to sting him five times before he could get his shoe. Needless to say he walks way around clover now *grin*.

Reaching down and pulling out a weed, I got a handful of thorns. Seems like I got good control over the less viscous varieties, now they are fighting back. I even saw what I think is a thorny variety of dandelion.

Mike

So g'ann,

What is it with the foot & ankle karma in your family? First DH, now you!LOL

slugs!!!!!

The endless daily carting of LOTS of seed flats in and out of the house every spring ( oh, for room for a greenhouse), preparing a bed for transplants, coming back the next day to plant, and finding out the hard way the cats have been there during the night-yech!!!! stomping on tomato worms-shudder! the sticky crunch of stepping on snails barefoot in the dark eewwww.... tiptoeing thru a bed, loosing my balance and falling butt backward into the nearby rosebush-ooowwww!! I think my most disheartening experience was when I agreed to plant a flowerbed at church. It is in a hot windy and overwatered spot, conditions I'm not used to gardening in. I read and researched for hours, ordered rare varieties of flower seed from England, carried them daily in and out of the house all spring, carefully prepared the bed with fertilizer and soil admendments, tenderly transplanted my precious babies with sighs of relief, and came back a few days later to find them all dead because the groundskeeper, despite careful intruction, forgot to water. (Sounds of head beating against wall at this point)

My least favorite gardening experience is taking place NOW when I am spending every weekend all weekend planting the 1400 (or is it 1600?) bulbs I bought this year. It is cold & raining & muddy & miserable & I have no time for a life outside of work & bulbs, yet I go to bed each night thinking "I really should have gotten some orange tulips, they would look so pretty, & I could start some of those new orange pansies underneath them, I bet if I ordered the seeds now I could have blooms by the time the tulips came up......."
*****
Hi. My name is Alison and I am a bulbaholic

Watering my shade garden during "skunk time" as my husband put it. I was watering my beds -the bushes were moving and low and behold--the baby skunk followed closely by his or her sibling and of course--Mama bringing up the rear. This little nose was turned up in the air sniffin' at me. I never moved so fast in my life. I'm just glad they left me enough room to get to the back door. Why I locked the door I'll never know. It took 5 min. for my heart to slow down.

Moving a rose bush. I took the "wash it out of the ground" approach, which helps get all the roots, but also tends to leave you standing waist-deep in a mud slurry while you bend over to work a hose on high stream deeper and deeper into the ground.

Putting the old nearly dry rotted rake handle too close to the fan forced kerosene heater in the greenhouse. I must say that a 5 gallon jug of kerosene makes a loud "bang" as it explodes and our fire department had really good response time. WEll at least the neighborhood enjoyed the excitement--Everyone came over to watch and we got in some nice socializing. I had great neighbors! (we've since moved)
But I must add that I had no idea that so many gardeners hated bugs-I think they're fascinating.
Penny

One day I climbed a apple tree high up and pruned some branches. My father gave me some quick curing roof tar to apply over the cut ends. By mistake the back of my head rested on a cut end that I had heavy coated with the stuff. I hung there for six hours, my neighbor came home from work hearing my cry of help and had to climb the tree and cut me down. My shoulder length hair waved in that tree for a year. Or maybe it was the time my father gave me military mace to shoot at the squirrles and it backfired and hit me in the face. Again my poor neighbor found me and took me to the hospital. Oh the life of a gardner!

THE hail storm of all hail storms! The garden was just ready to burst with bloom. My 50 year old peonies covered with hundreds of blooms -- cut down as if by a chain saw. All the astilbe, tulips and other perennials ready to bloom were leveled; this in a garden I'd spent days redesigning and planting the previous fall, patiently waiting over the winter to see how "perfect" it would look, now that I had it just right! Plus I had just come in from planting flats of annuals - which were now all flattened. Several other flats of unplanted annuals were still sitting on the patio ready to be put in - all torn up. The only survivor was one lone hanging planter which I brought into the porch, for some strange reason, since the weather looked beautiful. The hail came and went in 5 minutes - half foot thick in places. But long enough to destroy my whole garden, break windows; oh, and not to mention my one-day-old new car.

I was walking barefoot through my Pennsylvania garden after a heavy rain a few years ago. My flowers looked lovely in the warm evening mist. Bending to pull a weed, I realized a plump slimy slug had comfortably lodged himself between my toes. Argh. Did you know that slug slime isn't removable with soap and water, and even a rough wash cloth? I seriously considered hacking off the offending appendages with any nearby sharp object.

Gee, this thread is 2 years old and still going! I own 2 dogs that have the run of my back yard. It is my duty to pick up the "poops" when they are done. Sometimes I miss one and when I kneel down to garden, it's amazing how I suddenly find it, either on my knee or on my hand! I've some between my toes on occasion. Which is worse, slugs or poops??

Here is a link that might be useful: My Gardening Pages

Worst for me.....Having to trim a 120' privacy hedge every 3 weeks. Love the way it hides my garden but it's a killer to get on a step ladder (6' hedge) and grind my way from one end to the other. Used to be able to do it in 1 day, but now it takes 2 days ( 1 day for each side). Even with the electric trimmer it's still a dog! vgkg

I guess this would be considered gardening.
It was last November I deceided to mow the lawn. I have done this hundreds of times before. I always stop short of a small hill in the front. My husband then cuts it the rest of the way. This day I thought I would be nice and finish the job. On the second run down the hill I must have slipped on some leaves and down I went with the lawnmover pulling me down. I heard the crack over the running lawnmover and I knew I had broke my leg. I didn't know how bad it really was until after the surgery the next day. I now have a rod in my leg and two pins. I had a spiral compound brake and I broke 2 bones and did some other damage. I have just started walking (not really a pretty walk) and doing some things around the house. My garden this year will be very natural. My dh has been wonderful and has planted some plants, removed the leaves from the flower beds etc. I guess he is tired of doing the laundrey etc and wanted to get out of the house (ha ha). I really want to get out in my garden and play but I will have to wait. I will learn this year to enjoy the flowers and sit and watch everything grow. I hope everyone enjoys their gardens evn thoes weeds and slugs - be thankful you can bend down and pick them up. Peg

PS I forget to mention - one of my Christmas presents this year - a lawn service to mow the lawn!!!!

Peg- Oh my goodness! Hope everything is better this year!

My least favorite gardening experience, pulling weeds and finding a frog! I know they are supposed to be helpful with slugs and all, but I have a deep and abiding fear of the slimey little buggers! Goes way back. I would rather walk across a sea of slugs! My second least favorite gardening experience is trying to fight my DH for the yard. He loves grass, and I love plants.

Amy

Watching my roses grow, anticipate that first bud opening, then going out with scissors to snip it only to find that my 3 year old had picked it a few hours ago and presumably ate it. ;) I don't know how she didn't get pricked. Or when she asked if she could pick "the yellow flowers" which I took to mean dandelions, but she meant daffodils and picked at least 3.

Last year Floyd rolled through here and demolished any annual or perennial that was over a foot high and not staked. Tree limbs got snapped, leaves got blown right off of the trees. The rain came in sideways and splashed water up under the shakes on the house and washed out thirty years of dust, they're now permanently stained.

This was all bad enough but a few days later my Mother N Law, who only has foundation plantings of shrubs, drove by the house and got out of her car while I was still hacking and clearing the hellstrip gardens and told me that my garden looked MESSY..........I was so furious at her heartless comment that I told her off on the spot, she drove off in tears.

To make matters worse I was now angry at myself for making her cry and I decided to quickly get rid of the destruction in the hellstrips by mowing them down with the mulching mower. I hit the water company standpipe which was hidden by the iris and fragged the blades, the armiture, the gas tank, and the shaft.........I loved that lawn mower and I killed it.

The worst part of the day was calling my husband at work to let him know I had destroyed both his mother and the expensive lawn mower he gave me a few years earlier. He just laughed and laughed and laughed, said we both deserved what we got.

Trudi

Don't know whether I should keep this link going or not -- and maybe you're tired of it. But here goes. Years ago we lived in Tripoli, Libya. We had moved from an older part of town with a small but very nice garden; lovely blood orange tree and bougainvillea. But the landlord got greedy and raised the rent so high we just had to move. So we ended up in a "new development" being cultivated for the US expatriates ! Brand new and just totally devoid of any personality, or garden. Nothing was in the yard. It was a sand pile - no kidding - lots of scorpions though. It was so damn bad that after a week or so I actually watered green things (weeds) just to have something living out there. Bear in mind that there were weren't any nurseries in the country - absolutely nothing you could buy - no plants and no soil ! Through a friend in the British Embassy we latched onto a Scotsman, working for the Agriculture Dept. for the country. He promised me that he would bring a "tree" for the front yard. An Acacia tree - fast growing; blooms, beautiful !. But first; we had to do the following; dig a big hole --in fact he stipulated it that it had to be a meter x a meter. My hubby ended up digging it much, much larger because there was so much concrete and crap from all the construction. Hubby ended up standing in this hole up to his shoulders - that's how much he had to clear out and this was during one of their hottest summers on record. Hubby, who was not a beer drinker, went through quite a few pints during that week. Then we had keep the hole as damp as possible for at least another week (which meant running a hose into this hole as much as we could; but as fast as we ran the hose the water just seemed to evaporate. Then we had to scour everywhere we could to get as much "mulch" as possible to put in the hole. Ha ! Ha ! We drove everywhere; we were besotted; every flipping leaf I saw I yelled for him to sto the car;I would jump out and carefully bagged whatever I thought would be good for the HOLE. I am not kidding -- this is what we did.
The day came when the Scotsman called to tell us that he would be delivering the tree. Excitement - I could hardly contain myself. I was waiting out front for him. He arrived in a small truck and I thought the tree must surely have been placed down on its side in the truck. I waited and then he approached me with a large tin can in his hand; and a little seedling in it. I honest to God thought he was pulling my leg. I laughed. He was serious. I told him that there was no way I was going to tell hubby that he had dug this enormous , flippin' hole for a tin can size tree !. In his most beautiful Scottish accent; he explained. The large hole was to make sure that all the rubble, etc. was removed; so the roots would have a good start in life ! The watering for a week was to make sure the whole section was damp, for the same reason. The mulch; well that was wishful thinking; but if we found anything at all - well lass - that's good too !.
Hubby was most gracious. We planted the "tree". It appeared to be doing well; but a year later we had to leave the country. Some 9-10 years down the road a close friend had to go to Tripoli on business. We asked him -- would you please, if you had the time, go to the house we lived in and see if that tree survived. He did have the time to go and look and reported that our "old" house was the only one on the block with a tree and that it was just absolutely gorgeous; large and full of blossoms. Oh !that was such good news. We have always since that time, wherever we have lived, planted a tree. I just wish I had a picture of it. But I've never forgotten that gardening experience; when you plant a tree, make sure you have a really good hole -- OK lasses and lads ?

OUATB, Thank you for that lovely story. It totally made my week. I'll imagine your beautiful tree and remember your story for a long time to come.

After I posted the message about planting the "tree" in Libya, my husband gently reminded me that that was his gardening experience (the one and only I may add !); and that I should share the one that I had - later. OK -- so a year later we left Libya and went to Italy (loved that country). Rented a house (they called it a villa and it sounded so grand) about 20 kilometers north of Rome. It had a huge garden and the owners continued to keep their gardener on (thank goodness). The vegetable beds were enormous; which supplied the owners, but I always received a very generous amount of whatever was in season, neatly displayed on my kitchen step. On the other side of the other side of the house was a huge patio with steps leading to the garden, and there one day I found bundles and bundles and bundles of what I correctly assumed was garlic that the gardener had grown . There were masses of them. Long stalks and huge bulbs at the end. Poor old "xxxx --gardener's name" I thought. What a chore. I'll be nice and help out; I'll give him a nice surprise and just take off all those stalks for him so the bulbs can dry out better (at least I wasn't that damn stupid - Phhwww !). Of course, those stalks had a lot of the garlic "juice" in them. They had been placed there (as he probably had done for many years) to just sit in the sun and dry out, naturallyl. Before I had completely finished, the gardener returned I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He didn't speak English and my Italian was limited at that time. He loaded up all those bundles of garlic and left me -- absolutely reeking. My hands had absorbed so much of that "juice". I tried scrubbing; I tried bleach; everything. I just about scrubbed my hands raw. Nothing worked. I ended up - no kidding - honest - wearing gloves to bed because I just couldn't stand the smell (wore them for about 2 weeks). Even DH, garlic lover though he was and still is; made little noises of discontent over the odor. You know it took WEEKS before that odor disappeared. I just know that the gardener spread that tale all around the village; some crazy Englishwoman -- guess what she did to MY garlic ! We have had a lot of laughs over that one.
P.S. I still use a lot of garlic.

I worked for a landscape company for four years( a while back), I live in the southeast coastal area, where the heat
index can get to 115, with the humidity at 80% or more-
so every summer was an unforgettable experience, I'm very
parinoid about my kids getting heat-stroke at sports events
and camps-its like other people can't quite comprehend
the danger of this type of heat when its not their kids-my kids are always going off with lots of water, gatoraid and
instructions.
But the most horrible experience I had as a gardener (actually happened twice, seperate times) was when I stepped
into a yellow jacket nest (they nest in the ground), these
buggers are pure evil! They not only stick to you and bite you over and over again, but they will chase you long distances, so your not just trying to survive the bites, you think your going to have a heart attack just trying to get away from the swarm. I am so afraid of them now, that
I refuse to go into overgrown areas, or deep plant beds where I can't see the ground well.

kudzu

Separating thick flowers with bare hand and swiping against a 3 1/2' snake coiled under them.

I live in a township which is comprised of a "village" and then the surrounding area. I'm just outside the village limits. I met a new gardening friend in the village when I moved here, and she said her great soil was from the local town composting area. I said "Wow" and proceeded to load up a rubbermaid container and go and get me some of that black gold.

A man there was looking at me funny when I went back for more, but I figured people who hang out by compost heaps are a bit odd. The next week, when I went back he moseyed over and said that the composted leaves were only for village residents. Now, this whole town/village distinction was still very unclear to me at the time, but now I know that those prissy idiots would rather have a pile of leaves literally rot (I never saw anyone else but my friend and myself getting compost) than have a gardener benefit from them if that gardener was improperly zoned (by a fraction of a mile).

Hell, as I keep repeating, is other people. Plants, I never hate.

Couldn't wait for a tree trimmer to come whack off some branches that were growing too close to the house in our five-foot wide side yard. Besides, it was only a little job. So I propped our 12' extension ladder sort of against the tree and the grapestake fence next to it, and went to work. Unfortunately, my leaning out and trying to balance the pole trimmer caused the ladder -- which was none too steady in the first place -- to work itself loose. Seconds later, my shoulder hit the ground (or maybe it was the house), followed by the side of my head. My metal-framed, oversized sunglasses got squooshed into my face,resulting in the most oversized, vibrantly eggplant-colored shiner. At least I didn't fall on any of the tools I was using, and I managed to escape having a major concussion (though it was a few days before I stopped seeing double). I got a lot of strange looks at a school fundraiser we attended shortly thereafter - I'm pretty fair-skinned, and no amount of makeup covers a shiner that intense. (I briefly considered making up the other eye to match, but then, it wasn't Halloween.) The worst looks, though, came when my husband accompanied me out one evening to a mall - virtually every stranger we passed really glared at HIM. This experience so impressed my gentle-natured spouse that ever since, he tries to discourage me when he sees me reaching for that big ladder. I just tell him I'll wear a tee shirt that says, "He didn't do it!"