husbanicide on Easter?

Unlike other Easter's my husband and I are alone this Sunday. We attended church and then around noon, with love overflowing between us, we start weeding and prepping our yard for planting and growing and marveling @ Gods creation. After 2 hours of working I walk over to my 2 soon to be 1 year old lilacs in the SE corner. But there is only 1 lilac baby!!!! At that moment the "love overflowing between us" stops and I start screaming; "Did you pull out my lilac tree?" Long story short, we pull the garden refuse can off the curb and retrieve 'the weed". Last January I forbid him to use the clippers w/out me present. It was a hydrangea story. He is neither passive agressive nor stupid!! Actually, he is a real sweet heart. Oh well. Marriage in tact and lilac replanted! Alleluia!!

LOL!! wow.... well, my DH does not help me in the garden just for that reason.

I recall my neighbor telling me a story, one summer her dad came to stay with her for a few weeks, and he decided that he would be kind and weed her flower beds.... needless to say, she had to replant A LOT of plants that she did from seeds.

sometimes they do mean the best -- but just dont know any better.

at least you found it.

**typo

This message was edited Apr 8, 2007 7:32 PM

been there, done that...my Hubby is a gardener as well, and now that Mom's come to live with us, I never know what I'll wake up to in the garden from day to day......
I was dividing plants one day and putting the extras in the mulch, found out later he had been taking them out of the mulch and putting them back in the garden....ain't love grand????? Now I dump things wayyy back in the field out of sight.

This message was edited Apr 8, 2007 8:31 PM

I told my hus. not to touch ANYTHING in my flower beds without me being there. LIZ

My hubby asked what gardening jobs needed doing so I asked him to dig up all the Dandelions before they went to seed. Two hours later he said he had finished but when I looked the garden still had lots of dandelions. When I asked why he said he had left alternate ones in as there were lots of insects feeding on them!!!

I always have given my mother mums for every occasion.. birthdays, mothers day etc. She had over 180 ft across the front of the house filled with beautiful mums that came back every year. One year while I was vacationing with my mother visiting my grandmother... dad stayed home. When we got home, he was sooo proud of himself and proclaimed he had done her a huge service by weeding the flowerbeds before she got home. You guessed it... over 25 years of collecting mums were all gone! I have spent the last 10 years trying to get her collection going again but it is a slow process and more difficult for her to plant them than it used to be.

It is amazing the damage men can do when they think they are doing something nice for you... makes it very difficult to get angry.

I have my own yard now and he manages to pulll off some similar things here since he helps me with my yard.

Tammie

Tammie, did your mother collapse or scream? That was alot of work on your dads part, tho!

I can add to this. :)

Our front yard is the hubby's domain and it only has trees and grass. Hubby mows it but I have always mowed the back yard, where all my flowers and shrubs are, for obvious reasons.

This year I have had the bad fortune to have to battle breast cancer, and it's taking me some time to get back up to being able to do things. We just mowed for the first time this spring, and I could only mow a small space at a time. I carefully mowed around a few flowers and had to sit and rest. Hubby wanted to help and while I was sitting, he proceeded to mow down the flowers I had just so carefully went around.
I tried to yell to him when he headed toward them, but he couldn't hear me, so I never said anything after he finished. He was trying to help me, and I appreciated it very much.
This time, I'm determined to mow it while he's at work. LoL

Oh, that has to be the worst to actually watch your carefully tended babies mowed down... much worse than just finding them gone or trampled down. Hope you are doing better now.

Tammie

This message was edited May 4, 2007 2:08 PM

I too have learned the hard way. Now if I know it's sticking out or in a new place, I put a tomato cage or large coffee can around it until it's large enough to be safe. :)

Last year I started moonflower seeds in a planter, came out one day and it was empty. What?? Asked DH if he knew what happened, he said he needed some dirt to fill in between the rocks along the culvert of the driveway. If he had walked ten feet further there was a bag of soil he could have used. Later that summer, I found two pitiful moonflower vines struggling to survive the heat and dry soil, with no where to climb. I explained carefully in measured tones that he was not to take any dirt out of containers, nor was he to try and "weed" them.

I have ditch lilies I've been trying to get rid of for years. Dug out a bunch last year, and threw them in the trailer for a trip to the recycling center. A week later, I saw that he had dug them in on the other side of the garage. I didn't even say anything, I went and divided some of my Stella d'Oros, pulled out the ones he planted and replaced them. He now refers to them as "his" lilies. Sigh. They do mean well.

I am consoled that I have "sisters" out there w/ well meaning gardening assistants. I could start another thread about things that have been quietly tossed (out of the garage, basement, attic)by the same culprits that were not 'authorized'. Love is stronger then frustration!!

Yep. My DH has been banned from many garden projects. When I was mulching one year,
he piled several inches onto a bed of seedling primulas. I was able to recue them thankfully.
And he weedwhacks down a wonderful fluff of ferns that grow out of a stone wall of another
planting bed. Its a very naturalist setting so I prefer to have the ferns soften the edge but I suppose
its not as tidy as a crisp edge. I piled wood logs in front of them to keep him at bay there.

Tam

On the other hand, I am piling odds and ends in the garage for a pending rummage sale, and DH is out there retrieving them and hiding them in his den.

I have a friend who 'cleans house' when her DH goes fishing. He saves everything for "he might need it someday".

Mine does too, but I don't see any need for him to save MY junk-he's got plenty of his own.

I crack up every time I reminsce with my sister in law about the time they moved out of
their first apartment. My brother had some finally pitched a bunch of junk from his college
days. I was sitting at the kitchen table having a coffee with her talking about their move
to their first house across the state when we looked out the window. We could see my
DB walking around the parking lot, circling the trash bin. He was fighting his instinct to
retrieve all that junk he'd just pitched. He finally gave in and started crawling into the bin.
My DSIL jumped up & ran out. I don't know exactly what she said but he came in w/o his
junk.

Tam

I have really enjoyed reading this thread! Is there a Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul? If not, some of these should go in there. :-)

I especially like meezers DH refering to "his lillies". Reminds me of something my DH would do.

Thankfully, DH doesn't help with the gardening unless I specifically ask for something like digging holes or moving something I can't lift. Although, he has also made a blunder. A couple of weeks ago (right before my b-day BBQ mind you) he accidentally weed whacked one of my angel face roses. I had already pruned it hard as I rescued it from my mother's house. hehe I just thought it was cute the look he had on his face when he had to admit it. It's the same look he gets when the dogs have dug something up again.

Oh my word. I read the title to this thread and just knew before I even started reading it that it was just one of those threads! Somehow I don't feel so alone having helpers any longer.

Several years ago I was trying to establish some plants. I purchased surveying flags to be able to mark where the plants were going in the ground. I had planted several hundred plugs right into prairie grass that I was also trying to establish. You see, grasses of the prairie hold up the prairie flowers so that they don't need to be staked. All I wanted to do was monitor the growth of my plugs. We went on vacation and my Dad came over to water my plants daily. While we were gone, he decided to give my husband a hand and cut the lawn... the entire lawn which wasn't exactly all lawn. When I came home, I saw all the surveying flags sticking out of a perfectly manicured lawn. That was several hundred prairie plants that he mowed down as well as those weed things that were all of my Isaii Kiwi and Kentucky Wisteria. Yup, they looked like weeds to him so he mowed them down to tame them. I about gagged. I asked him about all the hundreds of flags and what he thought they were out dotting the yard for. He told me that he had been very careful to pull them out one at a time and that he had been even more carefull putting them back one by one by one exactly where they had been after he mowed. He said it took him a real long time mowing the yard getting off and back on the lawn mower but he figured he better be extra careful because a utility company was running something and didn't want to get in trouble. Given the sporadic placement of those flags, I can't imagine any sane person not questioning why a utility company would be spacing surveying flags at a rate of about 1 per square yard but what do I know... I'm just a female who sees utility company flags in straight lines.

My husband brought home Egyptian Walking Onions from an associate at work whose wife had "extras" who said his wife (me) would actually scream to have some of these plants. He planted them in a spot where they could "walk" so I could stumble upon them one day and "scream" with delight. Yup, I screamed all right- Silently to myself that I hadn't stumbled upon them earlier before they started walking. I'm still finding those onions popping up around here from time to time.

My husband is not allowed to use the weed whacker or the pruning sheers ever again in his entire life. The poor man wouldn't know a weed from a desirable plant if his life depended on it... and as of late... his life depends on it if he wants to go to bed without having to worry about a broom coming down on his head while he sleeps.

Only a broom?

I can't think of much else to bring down on his head that wouldn't hurt him. It's the shock value I'd be going for. Just like the shock I experience every time he uses a weed whacker or a pruning sheers.