So many people love their garden.

Whether it’s just a small plot on an inner-city porch or a sprawling acre or more in a country town, we spend hours, planning planting feeding and trimming and the nicest compliment we can get is to have someone see our creation and exclaim how lovely it looks.

The thing is, once the garden is created, it is necessary to keep it in order.

Plants are wilful. They outgrow spaces, wilt if they don’t get sufficient food or water, and when bought at great expense, often don’t come up to the buyer’s expectations.

So we insist on good behaviour from our beauties. We have spent money and time on them. We expect them to grow as expected, flower at the right time, and to – unlike a rose bearing the name “Perfumed Delight” that most certainly failed – make the whole place smell divine.

if not – the long walk in the wheelbarrow awaits them.

Is it too much to ask, that these beauties appreciate our lavish care?

Well, I have begun to doubt they do. The trees planted with such care and that first were a source of such delight with their beautiful autumn colours have hurled their used leaves in mad abundance  into spouting and pathways, the roses, seeing me armed with pruners, (does ANYONE make pruners for left-handed people?) lay in wait for my hands to sneakily stab me with their thorns.

The prickly cactus that I loved so much has fallen over and will have to be moved and replanted – small hint here – those long-handled tong things they use for picking up papers in the street are GREAT for handing prickly things.

I have begun to think that winter seems to be the time that the garden strikes back.

It seems the only excuse I can come to after I spent time cutting back the aloes next to the big golden tree.

Well yes, there was a bit of a breeze, but I still think the tree grabbed my glasses on purpose and hid them.

I crawled around on hands and knees, over a wide area mumbling to myself and fretting that a new pair would cost both time and money.

I was in despair until a glint of gold caught my eye, and there they were, tangled in a frond. – The photo is here, see if you can see it… I swear the tree did it on purpose.

Then, later, the branches on the Virgillia tree were beginning to shade the rose bed so I armed myself with the garden shears much loved by the men of the house, and thought how hard can it be”¦.?

I selected the branch to cut off, picked the cutting spot, closed the jaws of the shears and – nothing.

However hard I tried, the branch remained. Unfortunately, so did the shears. I couldn’t get them to open. They stuck there hanging from the branch.

They might have still been there in fifty years I was so cross with them, and I imagined someone in the future seeing them   – and wondering. Except my son, a month later was passing that tree and brought the clippers back asking me why… the branch is still there, the tree won.

So, fellow gardeners, just beware plants are living things, and you who boss them around, may find as I did, at times, the Garden Strikes back.