Just a background..I moved from our Matthews house leaving behind the weeds,wild bermuda and increasingly shady yard that had me moving my veg. garden three times during our 18 years there.

We kept the house, our son lived there and has since gotten married and has twin toddlers with an 'interesting' girl from Poland.

Last month her permanent visa was approved and they arrived in USA to live with us while they work to clean up that yard and house and renovate the house to her specifications.(that's a clue)

Two weeks after the kids arrived here, her Uncle arrived from Poland. I thought..OK..we have room here, I can deal with another guest.

Didn't know he planned to stay for 5 weeks. He came to help the kids clean up the yard,trim up the trees and plan/plant a vegetable garden.(it's only high-June and 90 degrees,LOL..maybe the heat loving crops will take.)

As a gardener,trained and experienced, and a Mom, it is delightful when the next generation shows an interest in gardening. You want to give the benefit of your experience and help them avoid the mistakes you made early on. Especially so when they are gardening the same property you slaved and struggled and sometimes succeeded with for nearly two decades.

With them, you have a hard-working man willing to do all the heavy work but you cannot communicate with him because of the language barrier.

Left to his own devices, this man has dug up and thrown out mature specimens I know I could have sold for upwards of $1000. (monster contorted filbert and other prime stuff)

He dug out a whole row of grey owl cypress, trimmed the boles and used the boles to create a rustic fence around what my DIL said would be left a natural area.

GIANT LOL...because he surrounded a willow trunk laying on the ground surrounded by giant pokeberry and wild blackberry.

Lovely fence though.

He hauled out the stored landscape timbers and 2x10 treated lumber scraps we'd built a deck from 10 years back and created a surround for 'their vegetable garden'.

He installed this surround so the garden is in full shade from 3PM on (from evergreens) and disregarded where I showed them the irrigation system path of water flow was.

The surround to the garden is tight..will make a nice mud bath after good rains.

The sunny part of my original garden with really good soil will now be grassed and mowed.

What cracked me up the most was seeing this man working barefoot and wearing only colored briefs using a pick-ax to dig out tree roots from the garden area because it is sited now within the driplines of many hardwood trees.

He's worked so hard for his niece and they both ignored recommendations on siting this garden. This mother of twins thinks she'll have time to keep this garden weeded and tended and it will be fruitful even in the shade.

I'm not usually the ' I told you so ' type but this is such a massive undertaking of labor in this unusual heat for the Uncle. It's a shame my DIL demands my gardening advice and then ,almost purposefully, does the opposite.

What would you do or say, if anything?