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...

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!"

I thought I'd bring this one up. An oldie but a goodie. My least favorite gardening experience is getting rid of bindweed. Everywhere I move I seem to encounter this horrible pest.
Yeona

Living on six acres of beautiful country side land for 29 years, and DH detests any kind of outside work. I have created beautiful flowers gardens. Dug a 20'x10' pond in hard clay. I could go on and on about all that I have done, but I have loved every minute of it. Then when we have visitors who remark about how beautiful our land is, DH immediately responds with, "WE have worked hard on OUR gardens." WE???? Half of that "WE" does not know the difference between a blade of grass and a weed and a rose. Geez!!

He does catch the snakes that get in my greenhouse for me, so guess I will keep him around for another 29 years. He might be in big trouble though if I ever get brave enough to catch the snakes myself. *grin*

Fighting field bindweed. Hands down. I would walk barefoot through a 1 mile path of slugs if I could make bindweed extinct.

Wading in to prune the raspberry bushes. I usually end up stuck fast to the plants and as I pull one branch away from my clothes another latches on to me. Weeks later I'm still digging out thorns that have embedded themelves in my hands.
Slugs are my number one nemesis. I scrape them off of everything and when I'm through my hands are covered in slime. That stuff doesn't want to come off. Yuk.

Early one morning last summer I was deadheading the roses in my front yard, wearing my pajamas. Suddenly I felt this horrible pain on my back, like someone stabbed me! Then I felt it again on my shoulder, under my arm, then on my chest! I ripped off my pajama top and began running around topless, trying to get off whatever was attacking me! Never did see it but I'm assuming it was a wasp of some sort. Stung me 7 times! Not only was I in horrible pain, I was completely mortified to have flashed every single neighbor who came out to see who was being murdered in their front yard! I don't garden in my PJ's anymore...

Dear hanksmom,

You have me laughing out loud!!!! But thanks for the heads up --- I often do a little morning gardening in my PJs. I think I'll put on something more substantial from now on.

Digging up a well-rotted deer carcass in the neglected vegetable garden the summer after we bought our house. Yuck! I'm still finding teeth and chunks of bone, and have an antler as a "decoration" in my flower bed.

--Pam

I loved all those messages!!!! My least was watching my three boys step into a yellow jacket nesting in the ground. I threw my daughter (who was in a carrier) into the van. I am still not sure what mortified my oldest (6 years old) at the time, The Bees or my pulling his pants and clothes off in the middle of the day in the parking lot of the doctors office !!!!!!! Thanks goodness we were at the Doctors. They all had stings (and were treated right away) and we found out that none were allergic to bees.....
T.

Walking through the flower beds and discovering something (a vole?) has pulled my newly planted phlox (six altogether) right through the ground. After the first one was gone, I was upset, after the second, mad and after the last one was gone, I just wanted to get a gun and shoot the darn thing if I ever saw it(and I'm not a gun person!).

Linda

Every June all the Silver Maple trees in the neighbor's yard and in my own yard let go of the whirly birds (seeds). Some years they are heavier than others. However many there are, it sure seems like millions and I spend the rest of the summer picking them out of the gardens along with the baby trees and weeds. Right after the whirly birds stop dropping the Cotton Wood trees let loose and the neighborhood is all full of white fuzzies. I hate it when that happens...

I can relate Sweet Pea2 lol I have one of those monstrosities in my yard and have spent each day picking seedlings out of my garden and strawberry bed. For every one I pick out 5 more germinate from somewhere.

My least fave gardening experiences? Well lets see, there was when peter rabbit ate the tops off several of my tomato and pepper seedlings, then there is the wretched mosquito who keeps biting me when I go out to water the garden, and then there's the cat who killed 2 baby bunnies and a bat and left the *gifts* in the yard for me to find oh and the little *trinkets* said kitty keeps leaving in a multitude of places in the yard. Oh yes, and then there was the time last week when my husband and I were clearing the "back 40" of the weeds that have been living there for generations and a beetley bug of some sort flew down my top and I was bouncing around the yard trying to get it out of my bra while my helpful hubby rolled around laffin. *grin* isn't gardening grand lol

1. Being bit by a copperhead, although the six weeks off work wasn't bad. My DH accuses me of trying to get bitten again because I still go barefoot.

2. The attack of the wood bees. I was mowing the lawn, disturbed the bees in the woodpile, and was attacked.

3. Discovering hidden fireant beds by standing on them.

4. The annual battle with poison ivy with the subsequent itch.

5. Battling bermuda grass in flower beds.

6. Battling bindweed.

When my neighbor's upwind decided to spray 2-4D concentrate on all of their weeds on a 100 degree fahrenheit day. Yep, it vaporized and wiped out my beautiful Vanderwulf's pine and tulip tree....*sob*....

Dswan: ditto for the field bindweed ("wild morning glory")...around here, it just laughs at all control methods, let alone attempts to completely remove it, chemical or otherwise. My neighbor shot his with Round Up, then covered the area with black plastic for TWO YEARS. He removed the plastic, and IT WAS STILL THERE THRIVING!!!

I've really enjoyed reading these, I must have, it's after 4 am! My least favorite gardening experience was tripping on a morning glory vine and falling into a big piece of plate glass. I cut my right eye pretty badly, couldn't stand to go out in the sun for a long time because of it.

My least favorite gardening experience involves mint. Now I love mint but . . .

I bought a house and the previous owner had a patch of mint at the side of the house. The patch was in a enclosed bed about 3 ft by 5 ft. It also was extending pretty far into the yard. I did not like the flavor of this mint plant and I have plenty of my own plants, which I placed on the other side of the house.

My husband wanted this mint patch for perennials and bulbs so he dug up the area and said that he would get rid of the mint in the yard waste. He did not inform me that he put the mint roots and some of the extra soil in the compost pile. After a year I started using the compost around the house and put a large amount of it in my hosta and bulb garden.

I measured the hosta bulb garden area and plotted what types of plants and where each would go, planning all winter waiting for spring. Spring comes and I don't understnad why I have so much mint! I picked mint out twice a day from this pile.

Upon learning that our compost was "infested with mint" I was livid! Within the first year of having this hosta/bulb garden, my hosta's all died between the mint invasion and the slugs and squirrells ate my bulbs.

Now 3 years later, I'm still plucking out mint and trying to find new and creative ways to get rid of it. If I ever win the battle of the mint, I'll try my hosta garden again, or plant mints of my choosing.

Valerie

The time my husband brought home a live turkey LOL. We lived in a city hmm where to put a live turkey okkkk put live turkey in the backyard. Ohh the turkey loved it there!! Ate every single teeny tiny green thing in the yard (totally denuded all the roses and the lantana and anything else growing) and would roost up on the clothesline at night LMAO. Finally gave the turkey to my Dad. Within days, my plants were going crazy, filled out, gorgeous, big blooms... If you're having trouble getting plants to grow, get a turkey LOL. Lilly

My least favorite garding experience....One sunday morning, I went outside in my pajamas to enjoy my garden in the cooler morning temperatures. My neibors are use to seeing me do this so they don't really pay attention, however the neibors dogs will often come over and visit hoping I will play ball with them. Well on this particular morning, I was bending over to pluck a few weeds when I was startled( to say the least) by my next store neibors' great danes paws on my back. I stood up and yelled at him to get down...he did taking my baggie pajama bottoms with him. Funny how on this particular morning everyone seemed to be paying attention....mooned the neiborhood.

Julia

ooops, misspelled neighbors!!

Cleaning out the pond....cold, clammy, and sometimes smelly!

Weeding

Weeding

This year it is also weeding for me. The weeds seem to be starting earlier than ever and seem to be tougher to pull!!!!

Yeona

The worst gardening experience I had was when we first moved to this house. The original owner (aka THE IDIOT) was some sort of supposed horticulturalist. To give you some idea of how dumb this guy is, our house is a small Cape Cod which sits on a good sized lot. Mr. Wonderful planted: 3 large pine trees directly under the powerlines, a locust tree that every time a mild breeze blows will drop 7.5 million twigs and sometimes small branches, massive unknown hedges in two beds right in front of the house, and I kid you not, a thornapple tree in one of the rose beds. Now this guy who I later found out fancied himself an ace gardener, (neighbors told me)used to sit on a box and pull individual weeds out of the lawn. This same mastermind used the skirting for mobile homes for the patio walls. Now you might be asking yourself, why did they buy this house? Because of the possibilities, the location, and I fell in love with it. Of the roses he planted, 3 of them have rose mosaic virus.....go figure.

having planted a gorgeous formal herb/veg/flower potager, the neighbor asking when i was going to weed....

The first time I mowed last spring I noticed a lot of fluffy stuff flying in the air. When I realized what it was I started crying, DD became hysterical, DH laughed at us and told everyone in the neighborhood. I'm now known in the neighborhood as "the baby rabbit killer". This year I did check the yard first and sure enough there is another den, so I guess I wait on mowing for awhile.

Raking moss off our stone roof on our home in 98 degree weather in my bikini and having the 90 year old neighbour tell me I had a nice butt!
Pruning back my 3 silver lace vines in the spring...6 hours of wrestling.
Playing in my garden, smoothing out the soil and grabbing a lump of cat doo.....I still love my cats.
Getting bitten by an earwig...it hurt!
Pruning my new tree peony to the ground....mistook it for a regular peony.
Theres more but this is a good start of my least favorites.

My worst gardening experience was early on a quiet Sunday morning. I was gardening in the front which is on a state highway, and there was a terrible auto accident right in front of me. The noise of the crash, and the tires screeching, and the yelling of the people was truly disturbing.

I wish I could find some humor in it, as most of you have found in your experiences.

Planting Oenothera siskiyou (Mexican Evening Primrose) ...horribly, terribly, invasive! I guess if I had an area I'd want it to invade in, it would be OK....
Interestingly enough, it's on the cover of the 2003 Bluestone Perennial catalog....

SMILAX!!

Fire ants, hands down! Can't see 'em 'til they bite you, can't get rid of 'em, and they HURT! But I did find out that chlorine bleach put on the bites immediately keeps them from welting and festering up. My neighbors look at me like I'm crazy when I'm sitting in the back yard swabbing my feet with alcohol, but hey, whatever works!

Digging up huge old root systems. I cut down some old, maybe 50 year old, Yew, Rhodos and Azealas that were overgrown, uncared for shrubs. We want to plant some healthy new ones in their place. Digging the old roots out is a huge job. Saw,dig, cut, chop again and again.

Getting rid of the blackberries. They had taken over one whole side of the garden and the thorns were wicked. Finally we hired day laborers to yank it all out and my husband killed everything with Roundup for a year before we did a complete new garden installation. It was exhausting, but is now the best looking garden in the neighborhood.

But that Bermudagrass keeps trying to creep back through the fence on the OTHER side....ggrrrrh!

When I rolled over an old log on the ground and there was a nest of baby garter snakes under there. Loudest scream I think I have ever uttered. The big ones generally don't bother me but that nest....eeeew!
When my dachshund slurps up the garden slugs on the sidewalk. Truly gross, she also eats other bugs. My old (deceased) one used to go after bumblebees and eat them and she didn't seem to mind. (That dog was as indestructible as a cockroach though, lived to 16 and a half years old).
Seeing my old sugar maples die of verticillium wilt disease and there is seemingly nothing I can do about it. Even worse when I have to pay $300 (actually a reasonable rate around here) a piece to get them taken down.

Oh man, here goes

Stepping on a bee in a clover patch or snail in the juniper.

Weeding around the rosebushes and squishing a snail in my hand!

Weedeating in the intense summer heat and fire ants crawling up my legs!! I ran back to the house throwing my clothes off. Bet the neighbors got a huge laugh.

Blackberries!!!! EVERYWHERE

The hailstorms we seem to have each year at this time. They drop just enough to stall everything and make it look reall raggedy.

DOG POOP!!

Poking around with Google this is the oldest GW thread I could find. Do you know of any older?