Name your three worst garden mishaps/tragedies/accidents

[joebwe25]

I thought it would be fun for everyone to name their three worst garden mishaps,tragedies and/or accidents

1.Last year I had a very pretty wheelbarrow full of petunias and impatiens , but no one could see it. SO I moved it out by the gate. BIG MISTAKE! The chickens found it. and tore it all up! Stupid hens!

2. My dad was tilling the flower garden, and he backed up,and snapped the trunk of our cherrytree sapling. It turned out okay though.

3. empty
Keep 'em coming!

 

[Carri]

I've killed a lot of expensive orchids. That counts for 3 and then some!

 

[silkiechicken]

I had the bright idea to grow a plot of corn where I had been tossing treats to the chickens... some scathing rat or squirrel went from row to row and I could see at every 8 inches a hole where there WAS a seed!!!

 

[beefy]

So far, this year, Thelma the cow and her sister ate 2 bags of chicken layer feed, 1 bag of bird seed, all my plants especially my snowdrops and sago palm (which will likely kill her if i'm lucky) and they strew my lawn furniture all over the yard. they also stepped all over where i buried my favorite cat that i accidentally ran over and the chicken feeder is out in the cow pasture now... i had some magnolia trees i had potted up and those are in random places throughout the yard and no longer potted. thank goodness she hasnt figured out how to open doors yet!

 

[Carri]

Good grief, beefstick. Your cow sounds like my horses... except they also drink out of the pool.

 

[beefy]

i forgot to mention that they somehow ripped my dear guardflamingo's legs off too. poor guy. i found him no where near his legs! luckily i was able to reattach them tho and he is doing ok (well when i get the cow manure washed off). my flowerbeds look like a pig stye now and they were doing so well. luckily i had covered a lot of plants b/c it froze one night recently and they didnt find those under the coverings.

 

[joebwe25]

My third tragedy: I had planted a packet of wildflowers. I put some netting over them so the chickens wouldn't get them. And they didn't. So then when they were, I'd say about a foot tall, so I took the netting off because the chickens wouldn't be able to tear them up.
BUT THEY DID TEAR THEM UP! And my pretty garden was gone, and the weeds took over.

 

[Rosalind]

1. Me: "Sweetie, our yard is the nastiest on the block. Please, please, fertheluvvagawd, mow the yard today."
--six hours later--
DH: "I mowed the whole entire yard AND weed-whacked your orchard, too! See what a good job I did? Now can I have a beer?"
Me: "Where are my blueberry bushes?"

2. I had this nice little veggie patch, complete with homemade trellises at a house I was renting in 2004. One side was sheltered by 40' trees. Just behind it, in the alley behind the trees, a transformer blew. Ohio Edison just didn't feel up to driving the whole 200 feet around the block to get to the alleyway, so they drove their maintenance truck directly through my garden and through my neighbor's above-ground pool. If the truck didn't smash each and every plant, the super-chlorinated mud killed it dead.

Ohio Edison, when I reported the truck number and the names of the idiot drivers, just kind of sighed and issued me a claim number.

3. When I was about 9-10, I had a veggie and flower garden on one neglected side of the house. My mother decided that veggies were working-class and therefore evil, and hired landscapers to demolish everything and replace it with mulch, pine trees and creeping juniper groundcover. She paid a small fortune for this, several thousand $$ in 1980something money. I cried for months on end. Next year, half the flowers I had planted had already self-seeded. It turns out that morning glory, pansies and mints, once established in Zone 6/7, really do NOT go away no matter how much mulch you put down...

 

[Carri]

1. Me: "Sweetie, our yard is the nastiest on the block. Please, please, fertheluvvagawd, mow the yard today."
--six hours later--
DH: "I mowed the whole entire yard AND weed-whacked your orchard, too! See what a good job I did? Now can I have a beer?"
Me: "Where are my blueberry bushes?"

 

[patandchickens]

1) Assuming that 3'-tall shrubs would be noticeable to DH when he's mowing, and recognizeable as being Not Grass.

2) Assuming that 3'-tall replacement shrubs with 3' stakes topped with orange flagging tape would be noticeable to DH when he's mowing, and recognizeable as being Not Grass.

3) Continuing to replant said shrubs.

Harrumph

Also, 4) back in grad school, spending $20 on bulbs that I planted in the bone-dry bare-earth brickmaking clay soil along the front of one house where I lived, and then being surprised that only the Lycoris came up of all of them. Duh.


Pat