Horrid, hateful Builders!

Not very surprisingly I have spent the day working. I expect that is what most people spend their weekdays doing, my days tend to be a little different as I will see two or three different customers most days, this morning I spent a few hours with a lady of senior years, I pruned her rampant climbing rose and did a little tidying up before moving into the front garden to cut her grass.   It needed a bit more than cutting.

A few days earlier she had some builders round to put in a concrete plinth for a new shed, along with a step to make it easier for her to get into her main garden.   The plinth for the shed looked good enough, and for the step they had made up some shuttering and poured in concrete.   I can't say that I was particularly impressed with the finished item, it would have looked so much better if they had taken the trouble to use one of the matching paving slabs that was available there.   It would also have been a lot more useful if they had put it in a position so the shed door could be opened!

The builders had not bothered to put anything down underneath the concrete mixer, allowing cement dust all over the grass. I had to rake it all up before even more of the grass was killed, make repairs and then cut the grass.   It was only after I had finished that I realised that the had also poured their excess concrete onto the corner of a bed behind a couple of shrubs.   I was roundly cursing all builders! Their lack of consideration for anything except the job in hand and eagerness to cut corners to save a few quid!

At my very next job I bumped into the son-in-law doing some work there.   He is a good friend of mine, who happens to be a builder! He happily gave me hand, made a point of clearing up, and was noticeably meticulous about everything he did.   Talking about it we soon realised that it is not builders I hate, anymore than he hates gardeners, it is not even that our trades have different priorities, it is that we found we both hate cowboys who claim to be bonafides tradespeople, but don't do a decent job.   The trouble is that they bring the whole of the trade into disrepute.

So please, when you see the teenagers employed for minimum wage by landscape maintenance companies, just pushing around a lawnmower, or wielding a leaf blower so the grass cuttings go all over the pavement ~ they are not gardeners!