Zucchinis make their mark in a vicious plot of sweet revenge

Skirts are far more multipurpose than trousers, which only cover and protect your legs. A skirt can cradle a baby, wipe up a stain, become a makeshift bandage or sling... sorry, back to the subject. It would have to be one of my favourite dresses, because next morning I noticed white patches where the ends of the zucchini had been.

No worries, I thought. I've been removing plant stains for decades. Just bung it in the wash and... but the white patches were unchanged. The baby zucchini sap hadn't stained the cloth, but bleached it.

It is a fair enough revenge. After all, I'd pinched the zucchini's babies before they had a chance to grow, ripen, and produce zucchini seed of their own. They are entitled to a bit of revenge. I now need to find a Texta to colour in the white patches... or pretend it's a deliberate not-quite-polka-dot pattern.

Stain and gardens go together. The tannin from bark will eventually stain concrete or metal rocks a deep brown; the slime in lily ponds will leave the sides of the pond brown, eventually, unless you bleach it off; and most gardeners have experienced "pruners' fingers", where you arrive back after a morning snipping back the foliage to find varied shades of brown on your hands that need several goes with the scrubbing brush. I also believe that nothing gets dirt from behind fingernails. You think you have it all, then a hour later another layer had risen to the surface.

Gardens are the home of lily pollen that can stain cloths and clothes if you don't snip off the stamen - and pollen - before putting the flowers in a vase. But it too can be removed if you move quickly, just with ordinary washing power then a longer-than-usual drying in the sun to fade the remnant. Don't try brushing pollen off - you are more likely to be pushing it more deeply into the fabric. Use sticky tape to remove as much pollen as you can before washing.

Recently pruned trees and vines can also seek revenge by drooling sap overnight on your patio, pavers or driveway. Usually this can be cleaned off quickly with washing detergent, water and a scrubbing brush - you may need two or three goes to get it all out. The longer the sap remains though, the more it will darken and adhere, so removing the stains would mean removing a hunk of wood or paver. The black wattle saps here are clear when they first emerge; then turn honey coloured, then a kind of dirty black.

A clear vegetable oil can also help... as long as it doesn't leave an oily stain of its own. Saps will often dissolve in the oil; and detergent and water and elbow grease will then get rid of the oily residue.

Since 2019 I've accidently discovered that alcohol-based hand sanitisers are excellent for removing plant stains from hands. From there it was an easy jump to using it to remove sap stains from the windscreen, and most of the rest of the car, except the roof, which I can't reach and can't see, so it can remain a sap-stained terra incognita.

My car is easily picked out in a car park - it's the one with black spot, from being parked under a large crab apple with a Dorothy Perkins rose growing through it. The crab apple blooms white in early spring; Dorothy Perkins gives her usual small pink flowered magnificence all through late spring, which is when her leaves begin to get black spot. You usually only find really healthy leaves on a Dorothy Perkins in spring, when the foliage is fresh and vigorous. Luckily Dorothy Perkins is so vigorous you can grow it up a tree or over a shed - somewhere where the leaf blight won't be noticed. But as its sap and general petal sweetness drips onto my car, I've found that cars can catch roses' black spot. (It could be worse, like aphids on the car seats, fruit fly infecting the engine, or powdery mildew disintegrating the tyres).

Luckily it's easily washed off with a sponge and water - if only it was as easy to remove from a leaf. If anyone is wondering why I park my car under a dense rambling rose bush, not a carport, it's because the man who became my husband appropriated my parking spot when he first arrived, and kept on parking there. He and a friend did build me a carport, but ignored the protests from both me and the friend's wife that both bays were too narrow to fit a car.

No, they had measured carefully, they said. And they had. They just hadn't allowed for the width of the massive homegrown timber supports, so the carport is now a "bung it in the carport till we need it" storage space, though there are plans by the next generation to modify it. After 40 or so years I might finally park under cover again...

But the lack of a carport does mean I've learned how to get a myriad of stains off the duco. Detergent works for the pine sap, the silver birch sap, the decayed oak leaves... but don't leave those on too long, as they are high in tannin and may eventually leave an indelible mark.

The worst plant stains here are purple ones, either from mulberries or the introduced weed, ink bush. Birds love the berries, which make an excellent pale pink dye for cloth - and a not-so-excellent one for my washing the birds or fruit bat perch on or pass over while exerting the purple remnants of the fruit.

Fresh mulberry stains can be removed with the juice of green mulberries, which is not as easy as it sounds as unripe mulberries aren't juicy. If anyone has found a cure for ink bush stains, let me know, beyond getting in fast and scrubbing with detergent, then repeating a dozen times or so. Bleach works for anything white; Napisan for colours is pretty good at removing stains but leaving the original colour still below; and eucalyptus oil can be magic... but also leaves its own mark, worse than the stain you've tried to remove.

If you have a large glop of sap to remove from cloth, freeze it first, and hope that most will peel away, then work away again with the hand sanitiser. The important thing with any stain is to move fast. A stain that has made itself at home will tend to stay there.

News flash: Nearly all the patches vanished from my skirt after a second long soak and wash. It seems the sap left large white splodges but didn't soak into the fabric. My favourite hot weather dress is respectable again.