?!#@!

I've heard of people swearing like truck drivers, or sailors, but one thing I've noticed in this gardening gig is, gardeners swear an awful lot too.

Mostly cursing b#$%!y roses, which scratch and can scar you for life, the b(*^%! weather, that doesn't cooperate, and f*&^%g idiots who don't know any better (usually sworn at because their way of gardening is just wrong).  My delicate ears get a bashing whenever I go to work because everyone is grumpy at everyone else, but it's ok, because I just pull my beanie over them. I've suggested a swear jar, but, mostly I just say you owe me a pie, and if you need to swear there's probably more creative ways of doing it than using the same dirty words over and over again.

If you need to get mad at anything, curse the weeds! Jesus cursed a fig tree and it never grew again. It beats Roundup. I'd love to have that power over certain plants...goodbye privet! Sayonara kikuyu. Good riddance creeping buttercup. And meet your maker onion weed!

Although I have met some ladies at the retirement village that say they talk to their plants and sing them songs. Which is probably more positive, but I'm not really sure how to go about it as plants don't talk back. It's kind of difficult to hold a conversation with them. Xanthe White talks to plants every month in NZ Gardener and they seem to reveal to her all sorts of stuff about their private life, but I get met with no response. For example, mother-in-law tongue just sits there and I think it says I don't even need water thank you very much. Just ignore me.

I have been watching a dvd British Gardens in Time. There are four gardens featured - Great Dixter, Stowe, Biddulph Grange and Nymans. They are all way out grand gardens in England that I have come to get to know that were gardened by eccentric English people. (With pots of money). There could not be a similar dvd in New Zealand because our gardening history only goes back 100 years or so. When people came here they cut down all the kauri trees and then planted an orchard, then the land got subdvided into sections, grassed over and voila suburbia. My dad planted a low maintenance nightmare of a garden which included conifers that grew rapidly and snuffed out all light and air around the house, so eventually they all came out, my brothers put in buxus (which some I still need to take out, cos one is blocking my worm farm) and horrible carpet roses that I finally got rid of, and now I have decided I will create a shrub border but I just have to make sure I select plants that won't die on me. Because if you spending $20 a plant it soon adds up.

Here are some plants that I bought (or were given) that didn't make it, so please don't make the same mistake. Its not that I'm a terrible gardener, I blame the s(*^%y clay soil.

RIP
ceanothus
grevillea
bougainvillea
metrosideros tahiti
hibiscus
iresine
poor knight's lily
kakabeak