The problem with gardening

is that, when you wake up early and decide to take an early morning cup of tea into the garden before it gets too scorchingly hot to sit out there, you find yourself doing this
instead of enjoying the moment. Meanwhile your tea sits folornly and forgotten on the table. It doesn't taste the same tepid. When you do finally sit down to drink your tepid tea, you find yourself looking at these red hot pokersand wondering what to do with them. They flower for perhaps a fortnight a year, look revolting most of the rest of the time (and not that wonderful when in flower). But, despite being severely pruned, rarely watered, never weeded or de-snailed, they come back bigger and taller every year. I've tried planting lots of things inbetween them (clematis, poppies, strawberries, various green things and assorted floral wotsits) and nothing else survives. Anyone fancy some fairly vigorous pokers?

Another problem with gardening, if you are unfamiliar with the fruits of your labour, is that, when weeding, you pull up and destroy a green thing which doesn't look like anything you have planted. And then realise once it has been wrecked beyond the possibility of replanting, that it was in fact the greenery from the bulbs you planted a month ago, and would probably have come into flower shortly. This is why I prefer planting plants; I can generally remember what they look like.

Moral dilemma - if your neighbour's garden consists purely of concrete, old mattresses, and stinging nettles, is it wrong to fling the snails you find in your own garden over the fence?

Tia