Well, I guess it would have to be slug hunting and then worrying about what did and didn't make it. Those blasted slugs are like slimy cockroaches! They will eat a plant to the dirt in no time. infernal things.
Next is the worry. We had a rough winter here and a lot of things have been slow to start this year. A few plants have clearly not made it and I am still looking for signs of life on others. I have reseeds sprouting up or maybe their just weeds??? Will this plant come back or should I plant some seeds so I will have something there?

The manure, weeding and digging I can deal with. Slugs and fretting I can do without. :-)

Cleaning the gutters. I just did it this week. I know you say it's not a gardening task, but it is. I'm preparing to install a rain barrel on the back of the house. The gutters need to be cleaned before I do this. And since there are so many leaves each year in my gutters, the water pours off the roof onto my new seedlings and plants. Without free flowing gutters, I might not have as many tiny seedlings survive.

We took all the guttering down! Got tired of elm and maple trees growing in them.....we are getting too old to be climbing ladders for that perpetual nonsense. I can't see any negatives so far and they have been down for several years now.

Mulching is my least favorite thing to do.

Finding bad bugs and diseases. Is that lily mosaic virus, or just a vitamin deficiency? Are those iris borer holes or slug holes? Are those cucumber beetles already? OH drat, all my trumpet lilies got frozen!

pulling the millllllllliooooons and milliiions of maple seedlings.....hate hate hate it..the come up everywhere by the hundreds.....

Hooking up that hose and unwinding then rewinding it every night! I spent about an hour the other night, untangling it, and then trying to figure out why it was leaking from the faucet, one trip to BigLots to find what I might be missing (turned out to be a simple washer)...bought adaptors that I didn't need........man I hate that thing!

I had to chuckle as I read responses to this as I'd think ... "yeah, that's it!", and then read the next one and say "yeah, that one too!". I can really relate to the maple seedlings - I am surrounded by large silver maples on adjoining properties that put out so many seeds it is hopeless, not too mention I'm constantly picking up branches. As for the hose, I finally went out a couple weeks ago and dropped a chunk of change on a non-kinking hose -- which unfortunately not only kinks but is very difficult to maneuver since it is so stiff. I keep wondering if it will soften with use/warmer weather or if I should return it. Blah! And I still haven't cleaned my gutters....... wig

Oh yeah, I add the hose issues to my least favorite things too. :-)

Also, mowing the front hill/terrifying cliff in front of my house. Actually, the lawn guys had no trouble with it last year - finished in about five minutes, but I'm not having them back this year. Too expensive because they come whether it needs it or not. 95 degrees in the middle of July - no grass, only straw - and I'm paying them $30 to go over it with the mower.

So, alas. Doing it myself this year. (In addition to the rest of my huge yard. Even the name of my area has the name "hills" in the title. :-/

So, that's: mulching, turning new gardens, mowing the hills and hose issues for me. :-) haha.

Hoses and hoses...oh well we have had SO MUCH rain that the stiff non-kinking hose ( yeh right) has not been much of an issue. I love to mulch and mow and edge. I hire the gutters to be done...$50 1x year is worth it to me. So I guess just hoses. Don't have slugs...yet anyway, and the newspaper and mulch pretty much take care of the weeds. c

Y'all need to get some decent hose reels! Makes life so much easier! Dh bought ours at Home Depot. Looks good and reeling that baby in is a dream! A little pricey, but sometimes it's worth it.

Here is a link that might be useful: aluminum hose reel

In general, my lest favorite task is weeding. It is difficult now; every time I wedge myself in there to weed I find I have stepped on a plant. No place to lay a foot!

One of the most intimidating tasks I have done already. Dividing the Joe-Pye Weed (and not the dwarf sort either!). It really needed it; the plant was smaller and seemed to have less vigor last year. But boy, were those roots matted! The roots/rhizomes had made a solid carpet on the top of the ground. And naturally I couldn't find the axe, so I had to use my old pruners. It took nearly two hours!

Lol, I hear you guys on the non-kink hoses. I bought one for the front yard several years ago. It doesn't sound possible, but it seems to kink even worse than the regular kind.
I use to use a hose reel, but it was just too much fuss, especially since I have to water every day here. Now I just keep the hose out.
CMK

Playing pick-up-sticks after a storm so I can mow. Someone had the brilliant idea of planting White Pines as a wind break (before my time). Works great to break the wind, but wind also breaks off branches which get my hands all goopy as I move them out of the way.

It has to be weeding, but not just any old weeding. I kind of enjoy the pulling the well-behaved weeds. Those are the ones that, once you get a good grip on them, have the decency to give up and come out, roots and all. They are satisfying, if not actually fun, to pull.

The weeds I hate are the ones that just laugh in your face by breaking off when you pull them. You just know they will be re-sprouting as soon as your back is turned.

Quack grass, for example. I hate that stuff. It keeps encroaching on all of my garden spaces and it has to be beaten back periodically. I have to use a garden fork to really loosen the soil to have even half a chance of pulling enough roots out to slow it down. Clumps of it get in my lawn and grow five times faster than regular grass, so two days after it's mowed, it looks like the lawn is studded with small green porcupines.

But I think I hate bladder campion even more. It has big old tap roots that go down to China, and no matter how carefully and deep I dig, when I pull them out and look at the end of the root, there is always a little piece missing. I'm sure that, even as I'm cursing at it, that little left-behind root piece is already sending up a new stem throught the wide open channel and whistling a happy tune. Grrrrrrrrr.

If I sound a little worked up, it's probably because I did spend some time today fighting those very weeds. I fought the good fight and gained some ground, but I know that those nasty little beggars are plotting against me, even as I type.

ThinMan

1) Dragging hoses around, 2) pulling up oak tree seedlings and 3) ripping the relentlessly persistent mystery vine off my shrubbery.

But I'd do all three of those things every day--cheerfully--if I could step foot outside without soaking myself in mosquito repellent first!

Oh, yeah! bug-juice! Head-nets and long sleeves in 90F. Ugh.

NOooooo.... not the hoses!! Please not the hoses. I had forgotten about the hoses. uggghhh.

Yeah... I had this weird idea about watering the gardens while I was fighting with my hose yesterday. I was picturing how our world could have developed differently than it did. Like, what if we could just hold a spout which wasn't attached to anything and it would summon water from the air or something. Weird, I know, but I had many ideas for watering that didn't involve a huge, heavy thing attached to your house.

My least favorite task probably is removing Hyacinth's dying slimy foliage for more attractive beds. There are areas that are not densely planted - and I can't stand to look at the dying foliage that seems to take forever.
Got to do a smarter planning of planting...

Finding poison ivy in the flower bed.

removing wire grass and burmuda grass from garden beds - they both have roots that go as deep as China and every single little sprig left in the soil creates a whole new plant and runners - I had to redo a beautiful bed of thyme because the wire grass was into that - I was able to save some of the thyme after making sure no wire grass roots were lurking in the patches I replanted.

While not a job I have done yet this year I dread Japanese Beetle season ~~grrrrrrrrrr~~

Lynne

Speaking of roots as deep as China... one year my friend and I messed up my yard because we decided to actually go to China and thought we could dig our way there. (A teacher had said China was basically underneath us on the other side of the globe.) When that didn't work we decided to find the devil and kill him or at least talk him into being nicer. When we spotted reddish rocks, we thought we were close. Then my mom found us and made us put back all the dirt. :-/

hardening my tomatoes.... I started many in my basement and there were too many. Had to take them outside in 3-4 large trays and had to lug those back in.... Hated it and killed off many because I got careless. There's got to be an easier way to harden off plants.

Ianna, get a cold frame. I move mine into the CF a few days after germination. I usually have to close it every night for about a month. Some nights I even have to toss a flannel sheet over it. If a hard freeze is forecast I bring the plants indoors, but that's rare.

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