Gardening Verbs

I've been writing a gardening journal for nearly eight years now. I'm always doing things in the garden - the same garden, the same things, the same month... My gardening journals are action packed with wheel-barrowfuls of the same garden rubbish!

'You love your burning, don't you?' says my non-gardening partner as he carefully retreats from view. He's not silly - stay within the immediate area of casual conversation and the hot red-faced head gardener is likely to ask him to help with something.

I wouldn't say that I love burning (this has serious anti-social connotations), but yes - I do a lot of burning - and weeding, pruning, writing lists, digging...

What do I do the most? What is the most repeated gardening verb in my diaries of nearly eight years? As a mathematics teacher (semi-retired, you understand!) I decided on the obvious - a scientific and accurate word count. So here are the top ten Moosey gardening verbs of all time.

Gardening Verbs Top Ten
• 1st - Planting (322)
• 2nd - Moving or Shifting (279)
• 3rd - Clearing (267)
• 4th - Weeding (257)
• 5th - Digging (208)
• 6th - Burning (127)
• 7th - Pruning (86)
• 8th - Dead-Heading (51)
• 9th - Trimming (60)
• 10th - Sitting (49)

Several interesting points can be made from an analysis of the figures.

Firstly, I shift almost as many things as I plant - Hmm... Wonder if this is normal? Trimming and pruning actions are relatively low for a garden with so many trees and shrubs...

And these figures seem to suggest I could dead-head while sitting down? This could improve comfort...

Lists of Lists...

Further to the above, there are 96 lists and I refer to them 260 times! Obviously I am a well organised gardener who knows the value of feed-back and feed-forward, and is able to prioritise...

An Active Gardener!

And the least used gardening verb is procrastinating, which was counted only TWICE! This implies that I am an action fiend in the garden...

Finally, I only use the word LEGEND (with respect to myself) 47 times. What more can I say?