Apart from all the bad oral hygiene, George’s big problem was that he was probably the world’s worst gardener.
Indeed the oft-told story of George and the axe and the cherry tree and the father and so forth was not, as is so frequently claimed, a complete fabrication out of whole cloth by that man of the cloth Parson Mason L. Weems; but was instead more of a misremembering, coupled with a total misunderstanding of one of Washington’s early pruning disasters.
And as he got older and gummier things just got worse: there wasn’t a plant alive (and only temporarily alive if he was involved) that he couldn’t stunt or shrivel or kill. And yet he cared so much and he tried so hard. It was pathetic …and rather embarrassing for all concerned, especially for the poor plant.
In this, George (‘GW’ as we’ll call him to save time) inhabiting, as he did, the otherwise lush land of Virginia was quite unlike George III (or G3 as we’ll call him to save even more time) back in the much more challenging climate of England. And so it was that G3 became GW’s bête noir, and bitter rival (not that G3 realised that until much later).
GW was particularly annoyed that G3 had invented the wonderfully efficacious technique, beloved of so many modern gardeners, of talking to one’s plants.
And so it went from bad to badder, until eventually (though it is a tragic, little known and virtually unsung fact) it so fell out that one of the major causes of the American Revolution was Washington’s jealousy of G3’s horticultural successes.
Apart from all the bad oral hygiene, George’s big problem was that he was probably the world’s worst gardener.
Indeed the oft-told story of George and the axe and the cherry tree and the father and so forth was not, as is so frequently claimed, a complete fabrication out of whole cloth by that man of the cloth Parson Mason L. Weems; but was instead more of a misremembering, coupled with a total misunderstanding of one of Washington’s early pruning disasters.
And as he got older and gummier things just got worse: there wasn’t a plant alive (and only temporarily alive if he was involved) that he couldn’t stunt or shrivel or kill. And yet he cared so much and he tried so hard. It was pathetic …and rather embarrassing for all concerned, especially for the poor plant.
In this, George (‘GW’ as we’ll call him to save time) inhabiting, as he did, the otherwise lush land of Virginia was quite unlike George III (or G3 as we’ll call him to save even more time) back in the much more challenging climate of England. And so it was that G3 became GW’s bête noir, and bitter rival (not that G3 realised that until much later).
GW was particularly annoyed that G3 had invented the wonderfully efficacious technique, beloved of so many modern gardeners, of talking to one’s plants.
And so it went from bad to badder, until eventually (though it is a tragic, little known and virtually unsung fact) it so fell out that one of the major causes of the American Revolution was Washington’s jealousy of G3’s horticultural successes.