Angry with OH

A couple of years ago I asked my husband to cut back the cherry tree as I thought it was getting to wild for its position near the house .It was a great fruiter ,I would get at least 12 pounds of cherries off it a year .He cut it back all right ..right back to the stump! He has never lived it down.

Oh lord, does anyone have a cure for aching sides please??!!

Is it men and maples !Apart from the lawns I do virtually all the gardening.However earlier in the year one of our maples looked a bit damaged, either by frost or wind.DH has had a thing about reducing it's size ,and twittered on about it.I said leave it and see if it recovers.Whilst I was out he hacked it back dramatically, totally changing it's shape.Grrr !
However I'm partly relieved,and annoyed because he's vindicated in that it's sprouting lots of healthy new growth and looks set to recover.

Meant to add my OH is currently at war with next doors cat. This beautiful creature keeps leaving its calling card in the front garden ( obviously knows its not safe in the back when OH is on the rampage).
So far all my tangerines have vanished, and their peel is scattered all over the front completely ruining my floral display. Plus all my real coffee has vanished because he read in the back of the Daily Mail it deterred cats. When I pointed out the cost of these I was met with a blank stare.
OH also has size 12 feet like Coco the Clown which he uses to crush my fuschias with when he's bagging up the cat crap. When I suggested getting an electronic cat deterrent from Amazon he refused on the grounds it was too expensive.

There are dar more important things to stress about. The plants will grow again...that is their way. Pour a glass of something and sit in the garden and count your blessings....

Ooooh. Painful - but i'd check what else is going on - mainly with you.
There are days when my partner could stamp on my toes and I'd be like - ah - sweet - he's so clumsy - like a puppy. And other days when his breathing makes me want to take out a contract on his life.
Neither the over-pruning or the severe severe crime of eating someone else's secret choccy stash are really that big so - maybe - you need a hug???

Forgive my wry smile but I know I've been there and felt exactly the way you felt, I'm just smiling because it appears I'm not alone. I have daffodil bulbs somewhere in the tip because he thought they were dead and my secateurs used for cutting electrical cables to name just a couple of examples! I tend to find a G&T helps!

Love reading this, so funny.
OH and i have split the garden in two. Mine is a wild, wavy and a slightly chaotic burst of bright colours whilst his is neat plant, soil, plant, soil etc.... very strange as he is not tidy in any other sense or setting at all. He says he loves my half but it would be beyond him to manage it.

My husband did the same . My son when he was home from university for the hols would help me in the garden , He trained a yellow and a pink flowering bush so they were as one and so beautiful ,.we went outside one day and he who never gardened had massacred the display beyond recognition , I honestly think some men are garden blind .I went berserk but it didn’t make the bush grow back quicker .He couldn’t see what the problem was .

You have made me laugh truly although when things like that happen to me I cry.

We host volunteers and have done for many years. 2 young German lads were let loose with the big petrol mower and when I next looked they'd mowed 2, not one but 2 flower beds along with the lawn. When I gasped in horror they genuinely didn't know what I meant. They had not noticed.

Another year the petrol mower wasn't working so I borrowed my neighbour's electric one and 2 French boys this time, mowed over the cable.
Never mind, pas de probleme. I will fix it. One if them spent the whole of the next day fixing it with tape but I had to buy my neighbour a new mower.

My brother gets furious when I remind him he weeded up my beautiful rose which I was nurturing . "There was no rose" he insists.

DH knows not to interfere with my garden.

CaroDane you are SO witty! Especially howled at I'd have been round there on my mobility scooter with a petrol bomb.
??

My husband has just asked me what I want in my tuna salad sandwich!!!

I have to confess - I'm the maniac with the secateurs in our garden. I like neat.
My shrubs are beautifully dome shaped and my maple regularly get a 'short back and sides'.
The clematis is not allowed to stray out of its designated zone and heaven forbid if it tries to sneak along the back of the shed where it thinks I can't see it!

CaroDane - I too loathe our neighbourhood cats, I have been know to hide in the gazebo with the hosepipe on 'full jet' and shoot the blighters off the fence. I have to confess I sit there and laugh like a demented soul when I catch one - it really is the funniest thing ever seeing them screech and shoot up in the air! And I don't feel even slightly sorry.
Used coffee grounds on the soil keeps cats off - your local coffee shops will let you have as much as you like.

Exactly! Used coffee grounds, not my best Columbian straight out the sealed packets!

Thank you so much for this thread, especially Luckygirl`s cats!

Tillybelle I am so sad to hear about your apple tree , I hope it recovers ! Only the apple tree be-loved could understand. On another note the idea that men might chop bits off as a result of a deep unconscious jealousy sort of rings bells. Being a psychotherapist I’m now wondering if my husband resented my nurturing , loving admiration for the apple tree or suffered some archetypal Adam Eve and the Apple ? Tree danger complex !! Lol. !

Namsnanny. I meant to send this earlier - something happened!

Your DH obviously has very small buckets for straining his nettle fertiliser! (Not even nettle wine? huh!)

FC61 Thank you very much for your much appreciated loving sympathy for my apple tree.
I am very pleased to hear that another professional - a Psychotherapist to boot! - shares my theory concerning this male urge to chop. Your fear of your husband's archetypal apple tree complex, imho, is very real. You may well be able to keep him in his place by the regular serving of apple pie.

Grammaretto that horror story of yours concerning your European slashers will appear in the next Brexit flyers

I feel for you. My ex came in from the garden one day and announced he had dug up a "whole load" of funny looking weeds. My prize miniature strawberries. Then to cap it all, he managed to cut right through the main branch of the clematis which adorned the house. ?

I think the professionals posting on here are on to something, all this psychopathic male behaviour in the garden is classic passive aggression.
I thought it was just my OH (Great Dane) but now realise it's an epidemic.
Maybe it's caused by some kind of virus making any male holding a sharp object outside to behave like a lunatic blend of Steven King/ Gardener's World/and Midsummer Murders.

Still haven't found his chocolate hoard (better hidden than the Sutton Hoo ship burial) but have put two of the paperbacks he's just bought with his birthday book token in the bottom of the charity bag.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.

jaylucy. (Sorry - this was meant to be sent earlier - I was interrupted...)
In the midst of this hilarious thread, I have not forgotten reading your heart-breaking story.

Firstly, I am so sorry to hear that you lost your mother suddenly. That is a terrible thing to cope with. It must have hit your poor father very hard too. I hope he is coping.

As to the house situation - I really can identify with you. Twice I have experienced something like this. The first was when my mother had to go into Residential care and her home, where I had been born and which had been built by my father's family over a 100 years before, had to be sold. I had left many of my things there. This was because, when I was married, my mother was upset about her house "looking empty" if I took my books and mostly, the collection of special china that my Great Aunt had left me. My mother had also told me to keep all her music. But when I came to the house - which I still called "going home" - there was nothing there. My half sister and her sons had been there. I find it hard to talk about.

More recently I packed up all the contents of my kitchen plus many other things, including all my hobby things, in preparation for a builder to alter my house for me to use my wheelchair. He was a criminal. He stole from me but I did not realise straight away. He even went through all my private papers, again I did not realise at the time. I am still living in absolute mayhem in a house that is almost uninhabitable, with furniture all piled up in the hall and kitchen because the floors have to be taken up in the main house and the damage he did will cost thousands of pounds to rectify. I can't find things such as insurance documents or my passport. I am unable to do any of my hobbies because there is no space and the place is so messy. I am disabled so I do craft type hobbies to keep me from going mad. I hardly go out and I very rarely see people. I can't invite people to my house. It is really horrible. I live alone and am in pain all the time so moving is very painful.

I really do sympathise with you about these wicked and cruel people. They are utterly callous. They have no humanity in them whatsoever. Your poor Dad! I am guessing he must have been about my age. When you are older it seems to me it really is harder to cope. Even my children do not understand how this messed up house has messed up my life. I can't unpack my kitchen things yet for example as there is nowhere to put them. I feel as if my life has been held in a kind of hell for the last three years. My life and home have been taken away from me and on top of this, the builder forced me to pay him nearly twice his estimate so now I am extremely broke and had to take out a bank loan which was too much for me.

I do hope you are getting sorted out and that your life is improving. I sincerely hope your Dear Dad is managing and being able to enjoy life. I'm sending you all my love and sympathy. Please strive to not let these people upset your life and your father's life. I can attest to how awful their actions can be. I do so hope you and your dad are able to feel happy and enjoy things now.
Sending you lots of love, and very best wishes,
Elle x ???

My husband has actually peed in the wardrobe after a night's drinking with his old enough to know better cronies.
But not before standing proudly in the nuddy,opening the curtains wide and then the window, puzzling as to why this somehow didn't feel like the lavatory and therefore settling on the wardrobe.
I lay in the dark grinning like the Cheshire cat: he'd randomly chosen his side?

If I get slammed on this thread for being nasty and malicious, I might relent and take one out but don't feel too sorry for my OH.
Remember his CRIMES

I am the woman who endured public humiliation caused through him rifling through my basket at the till in Asda and picking up a box containing a tube of lubricant that I'd concealed under a Woman's Own. He carefully studied it under the watchful gaze of a large queue as if he was deciphering the Rosetta Stone before demanding to know why it was in our basket. (MEDICAL REASONS BEFORE YOU ASK AS WELL)

This was sole reason I switched from Asda to Aldi.

‘Twas my dear brother who trashed my winter flowering cherry.
I’d asked him to cut down the bushes either side of it to the height of the fence.

I left it in his “capable” hands. Deliriously happy that here was one less job I needed to do.
Oblivious to what I would return to, I skipped off shopping with not a care in the world!

When I came back something didn’t seem quite right. As we parked the car I craned my neck and there it was... or rather... there it most certainly WASN’T!!!
He had reduced my 16ft cherry tree to the size of the 4ft fence!!!

...and he was SOOOO pleased with himself, almost patting himself on the back for a job well done.

A few choice words were spoken and I retired to my room to punch the pillow while pretending it was his grizzly little head!
We haven’t spoken much since and that was a good few years ago.
The tree eventually grew back but nothing like it’s former glory
.
NEVER trust a man with a lopper!!!

Incidentally I can only think of one thing worse than a cats tail sticking out the ground and that would be it’s head. Lol.