Needless to say, those thoughts are followed immediately by the realisation that you're no loss to the commissioning department at RT� Radio.

Washed, Dried and Pressed is actually a series about the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin. It's brought to us by Mary Mulvihill, whose last series, Chopped, Pickled and Stuffed, sounded like a food programme but was actually about the Natural History Museum.

(Mulvihill is obviously partial to verbs in the preterite, and there's not a thing wrong with that, but why the red herrings? ) Last week, she wandered the museum at the botanic gardens with Grace Pasley, research assistant, and Dr Matthew Jebb, curator, turning up bits of bog oak and what have you. She also examined Moor balls, lumps of algae that roll around for years getting bigger. (Jebb was able to tell her that the Moors used to trade them medicinally, but unfortunately she didn't ask him what they were used for. ) "Across the table, there is one of our most fantastic items, " exclaimed Jebb. "That is a baobab fruit." Then - because clearly he's a man who doesn't hog glory - "Grace will tell you who donated it."

"Yes, " said Grace, her voice quaking with pride.

"This was sent to the museum by Roger Casement.

Roger Casement the Irish patriot."

The greatest excitement, though, was reserved for Item 71, a mysterious wooden object that museum staff hope someone will be able to identify. It was moved to Glasnevin from the National Museum in the 1970s and lost its label on the way. It took some doing to describe it (radio being what it is), but you can see it on the botanic gardens' website and, if you know what it is, you win a tour of the herbarium - if listening to Washed, Dried and Pressed hasn't ruined the surprise for you.

Speaking of gardening, Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4 last week asked why lawn-mowing is considered men's work and why men are so fantastically keen on their lawns. (It's at moments like these that you realise the tremendous cultural gulf between Ireland and Britain. ) Jenni Murray put the question to Tom Fort, author of The Grass is Greener. He acknowledged that the attitude of men to their lawns is different to the attitude of women. "We want to exert some control over the area outside the back door, " he said, without adding that men have no control whatsoever inside the back door, heaven help them.

Garden designer Anne Beswick came over all laid back and said that as long as her lawn was "greenish and flattish" she was happy. "If life is too short to stuff a mushroom, " she said, "then it's too short to have a perfect green sward of monoculture."

There was a fair amount of good-natured, girlish chuckling over how uptight men are, and what have they got against daisies, as if no woman had ever asked anyone not to walk on their clean floor or obsessively straightened a throw.

Now if they were to make a programme about laundry, we'd soon see the other side of this.