How to Garden With Children in 53 Easy Steps

Before they took 53 steps

1) Go to nursery and pick out heirloom tomato plants. Because heirloom must be better, right? Surely they have survived this long because of their juicy goodness.

2) Bring plants home and unload them onto front porch.

3) Leave them there until the following weekend, because buying them at the nursery was enough gardening for you for one weekend.

4) The next weekend go buy some gardening gloves.

5) Leave the plants there until the next weekend.

6) Put on gloves and go to plant the tomatoes.

7) Discover a couple of shriveled up green stems and several overturned plastic pots.

8) Go back to nursery.

9) Buy some more heirloom tomatoes.

10) And an adorable watering can.

11) Come home and decide to plant them right away.

12) Find a nice sunny spot for the plants and put them in the ground.

13) Feel very proud and gardener-like.

14) Decide this might be the hobby for you after all.

15) Vow to water them every day, in keeping with your new gardener identity.

16) Two weeks later realize that you have forgotten all about the plants.

17) Discover adorable water can has been run over by a bicycle and now leaks.

18) Pull out hose.

19) Turn it on as quietly as possible.

20) Supersonic bat-like hearing enables children to hear the hose turn on and come running.

21) Children beg to use the hose.

22) Children promise to water the plants nicely.

23) Acquiesce against better judgment.

24) Once plants are floating in a pool of muddy water tell children to stop watering them.

25) Wrestle hose from child and get a face full of water.

26) Contemplate "accidentally" squirting child in the face.

27) Remember that the neighbors are probably watching.

28) Turn off hose.

29) Go back to check now-hydroponic tomato plants and discover children splashing in the mud.

30) Consider briefly bringing them inside to clean them off.

31) But it is only noon.

32) And you have already cleaned the bathtub this month week.

33) Get out hose again.

34) Spray children off in spite of their protests.

35) Remembering neighbors, say loudly, "Oh I thought you WANTED ME TO SQUIRT YOU! So sorry OH PRECIOUS LIGHT OF MY LIFE!"

36) Put hose away again.

37) Go inside for a stiff drink diet coke.

38) Come outside to find wet children rolling in dirt.

39) Question will to live.

40) Decide to ignore them.

41) Successfully ignore them for 3.2 seconds when they decide they have had enough of being outside.

42) Get out the hose again.

43) Hose the children off.

44) Forget all about neighbors and yell, "If you would STOP COVERING YOURSELF IN MUD..."

45) Turn off the water.

46) Leave hose laying across the driveway for husband to run over when he comes home from work.

47) Repeat this scenario semi-weekly until the plants finally die.

48) Buy super delicious tomatoes already grown by someone else who has no children, or more patience, or both.

49) Tomatoes you rightfully deserve for all your valiant gardening efforts.

50) Vow to remember that you are not a gardener.

51) Until next May when the spring air renders you completely amnesiac.

52) When you buy several flats of some vegetable plants.

53) And wonder how hard it could be to take care of them...

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