He must be related to my DH!!!! LOL Yours does look better and will probably come back.One day while i was at work my DH cut my lantana back,i mean drastically.I was sooooooooooooooooo upset,i told him he better hope it comes back,and he knew what i meant,as one year he did the same thing to my apricot tree and then dug out the stump,i threatened to divorce him if he did that to anything else.LOL MEN!!!!!
Kathi

It must be a man thing! I let mine do some trimming once and he cut down an apricot tree. The only way he does it now is if I am standing right there..... or I usually just do it myself.

Actually, I think yours looks better now. Maybe he did a good thing.

Can I borrow him? How good is he with overgrown roses, you know the kind that keep lions out of african villages :o).
Annette

When he says cut back, he doesn't kid around, lol!

Maybe he'd like to whack my evil holly?

I have some forsythia that he can work on.

:-)

My DH is a great help for the big projects outdoors but will not cut down/mow over stuff without directions. He's very aware of the fact that he is an amateur at identifying plants and trees and sticks to basic lawnmowing unless a request is made to trim or cut something. This is a big change from my first husband; who would cheerfully cut down anything that bothered him. I was devastated to come home one day and find my golden pear tree on the ground...it was FULL of little pears and all my now EX husband would say in his own defense is that he "thought all those things were some sort of disease." (no...I didn't divorce him for that)

So it sort of sounds like most folks there is one gardener in the house and one amateur helper.....wonder what kind of power struggles emerge when there is a household with TWO gardeners (particularly if they have very different visions for the property)?

We have been married 25 years and are both gardeners. My job is to prune, his job is digging holes. Match made in heaven. :)

He tried to sneak some forest pansy redbud branches out one day but I caught him. I've gotta keep my eye on him! In the way of the mower shmower. Indeed.

Truly we love to garden togther. If he got his way more often, things would be trimmed more tidily. I like wild and he likes order. He likes to see mulch and I don't. We try to meet in the middle. Fortunately for me, he is giving.

The worst thing though is our choice in plants, especially color. He likes the typical red-orange-yellow and I'm a pink-purple-blue-very pale yellow person. He likes BIG and I like airy and dainty. We meet with oriental lilies. We both love them. I'll tolerate yellow and he'll tolerate pink. It's a riot here. Definately a polychromatic color scheme.

You can borrow him but make sure you send him back... there's LOTS more pruning to be done and I don't like having to mess with it. LOL He's pretty great when it comes to things like this though... although I didn't want to prune the dogwoods just yet I saw no real harm in getting them out of the way as there was some sort of white fungus growing all over the branches. Once he did cut them all down (I was there supervising and helping to pull out the 10-15 ft long "branches") I noticed just how big the stumps were. There's only two shrubs there but they will more than likely come back a lot stronger next year. I bet they'll start growing in before winter actually.... I'm not worried about bloom time anyways as this variety doesn't have real pretty blooms.

I was the one that pruned the dead wood off the Rose of Sharon as when I let him at it he cut off about 12-13 flower buds. They haven't opened yet and I'm sure a lot of the reason this old tree isn't doing the best is because of those dogwoods.... now that they're gone it should do much better.

When it comes to our gardening there are quite a few things that both of us like and only a few that he likes and I don't like or vise versa. So, we're pretty compatible at least as far as gardening goes.. ;-) But seeing as I'm the one who really is deciding what plants are selected I let him choose what he likes and then I pick from there.

We've been married for just 8 years now but so far things seem pretty good... if I could just get him to prune at the proper times of the year though... that would be nice. :-)

ttfn
Mystic.

It's our 30th anniversary today and my husband wouldn't contemplate touching anything in the garden unless specifically asked nicely. It's strictly my province. Mind you it's a microscopic garden so no help is needed. Works for us.

Lol - I only let dh near trees/shrubs if either I want the entire thing to come out, or there is one large branch that is obvious that I need his help with. Otherwise, I do all of the thinning and shaping types of pruning. I especially like the ones where he looks at it afterwards and says, "I'm not quite sure what you did, but it looks a lot better now!"

But, he did help get rid of a buckthorn, so I can't complain about that!

Sounds like my DH. There was an overgrown border of trees and shrubs at the front to the house. Now there's a SEVERLY PRUNED border of tress and shrubs. I laughed out loud when I saw it. Like a bad haircut, it will grown back.

Libby

my dh- his job is to clip the vines but he always leaves them wherever they drop! grrrrr.......

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY flora_uk!!!! :-)) 30 years?!? WOW. I sure hope my hubby and I both live to see that mile stone. My parents have been married for 32 years. I'm 36 and hubby's 47 so we should be able to put up with each other for that long. LOL

ttfn
Mystic.

Just this weekend I was weeding and I told my DH "don't prune the bottom branches from this magnolia or this evergreen." He replied "like there was any chance I was going to do that!" Because 1. he doesn't just take it upon himself to tend the gardens, but he helps me execute my plans and projects all the time, and 2. he'd be afraid I would have a fit if he cut something I didn't want cut.
He's great! Just this weekend he built me a picket fence from found pickets, to hide my little side yard/compost area. Gotta love him! P.S. We've been married 27 years.