I created this site because I have a garden and I hate gardening.
I wonder how many of you will read those words and agree with them? I also wonder how many of you are smart enough to think 'that doesn't mean you're allergic to gardening, you blithering idiot.'
Well, smartypants, that's actually a completely separate thing. See, I have hay fever or 'allergic rhinitis' which means that in a very real sense I am, in fact, allergic to gardens. My immune system essentially gets beaten up by flowers and grass. What do you find in gardens? Yeah, that's right - pain, suffering, puffy eyes, runny noses, sneezing fits, crying, and all sorts of other fun and games.
In terms of complexion, I'm a pale-skinned person who burns by the light of an e-reader. Might be the Irish ancestry (thanks, Grandma) coming through, but if I'm out in the garden and I'm not slathered with factor 50 sunblock I guarantee that I'll turn red and then go right back to being pale again afterwards with no tan to speak of.
It gets even better, too, because on top of that I'm deuteropic - that's red/green and red/brown colour deficient, or what was referred to as being 'colour blind' when I was a kid. The terminology is a little less stark these days, but the upshot is that even my visual colour range is suboptimal for gardening. I used to be shortsighted but had that laser-corrected, so that's one less thing to deal with.
I've also had more than my fair share of accidents over the years, leaving me with a lower back musculature that's (apparently) more scar tissue than actual muscle after a car accident, and my left arm has metal plates thanks to a motorbike accident. Most of the time, it's not a problem but if I twist in slightly the wrong way under load I'll need a ton of painkillers. There's maybe even a whole accident-prone thing implied there, but I'll leave that to your imagination.
Plonk all of that together, and you're basically left with someone who'll be in the garden with eyes and nose streaming and skin burning probably injuring themselves in some way and then to add insult to injury I don't even get the full benefit of all of those pretty colours that everyone else keeps going on about. I am, in every real sense, about as biologically unsuitable for gardening as it is humanly possible to be. You could say that I detest gardening at a biological level.
Despite that, I've still managed to make something of my garden that I'm proud of. Sure, I'm entirely unlikely to win any awards, and I very much doubt I'll ever be invited to design a garden for a flower show or go on TV or anything like that. But that's not why I garden, and I expect that you probably have your own reasons for approaching gardening despite your deep-seated loathing and resentment of the effortlessly green-fingered.
So I thought that I'd write some of this stuff down, because I figure I can't really be the only one this unsuited to gardening. I may even throw in some tech stuff along the way because I am a professional geek and I like to tinker with tech. And even if you're not like me, I think that some of the things I've failed at might either amuse you or serve as a learning experience for you.
If my purpose in life is merely to serve as a warning to others, then at least it's still a purpose.