Secateur madness

My husband is the demon pruner round here. Never happier than when wielding the secateurs. I’m forever saying No, you can’t prune that one yet! Nothing’s safe but I’m grateful for the help. He did a good and very restrained job on the roses last week.

My FiL was a nightmare with secateurs or garden shears. We had to hide them whenever he was visiting.
He once raked our back lawn so hard that it never recovered - we had to get it re-turfed.
Luckily it’s very small!

Crikey Witzend grass is usually very forgiving so he must have gone at it somewhat!

Never again for me!
One year I went berserk with the secateurs and chopped into my lonicera nitida the messy relation of honeysuckle shrub only to find there was a blackbird's nest with several eggs beautifully hidden in the centre. As soon as it was exposed, squirrels, cats or crows finished it off

Oh dear. How sad. Never try to cut any shrub back in the nesting season without a thorough investigation.

Oh does most of the pruning, he is safe with secateurs it is when I hear the chainsaw start that I get worried. Most of my stuff is soft herbaceous which he leaves alone which works quite well. He does the hard work, I potter around the flower beds.

OH

Josieann

Crikey Witzend grass is usually very forgiving so he must have gone at it somewhat!

He was infamous for cutting things down and digging them up,*Josieann*. The beds in their garden were invariably immaculate - but consisted largely of an expanse of totally weed-free earth, just dotted with a plant here and there.

He did the edges of the lawn so often - very neatly! - that the lawn gradually shrank, while the immaculate (but largely empty) beds, grew ever wider.,
When my poor Mil was once away for a few days, he cut down the pear tree she loved.
I don’t think she ever forgave him.