Gardening for Procrastinators

Buy some plants. Put them outside with the intention of actually planting them. Don’t. Wait until at least one dies and the guilt gnaws at you.

Buy new gardening tools and gloves because you left the last ones out in the rain. Really, aren’t they gardening tools? Aren’t they meant to be used outside? Aren’t they meant to take on the weather and the dirt and the water? Aren’t they meant to be made of something that is not going to degrade immediately upon exposure to sunlight? Because, clearly, the tools you bought last time and left outside were actually meant to only be used in some perfect, sterile clean room where they make computer chips or whatever.

Spend a lot of time (inside) on the computer, playing Plants vs Zombies. It’s good practice for planting, and you can do it at any time of the day or night, unlike actual planting that is best done when it is light outside but not too hot. And since you're in Texas, it’s always too hot, and when it’s light, it’s especially too hot. The computer game inside the house is much more appealing, plus the plants actually kill zombies (or at least keep them at bay), and none of the plants in your garden will ever do that.

Finally spend a whole afternoon weeding the garden patch that you’d meant to weed before you bought the plants. Put the plants (including the dead ones) into their sloppily dug holes. Know that the sun and water and love you will shower on the plants will bring the dead ones back to life and help the half-dead ones thrive.

Keep forgetting to water the plants. But repeatedly reassure yourself that it will be okay because it’s bound to rain sooner or later, and, really, if all the plants in the world required someone to water them, we’d be living in a world of alternating dirt and mud. Clearly, nature can take care of itself.

Go out to water your garden and discover that, in many places, the weeds are now bigger than the plants. The rabbits don’t seem to like the weeds as much as they like the plants you put in the ground, which explains why the weeds are prospering so much compared to, say, the pepper plant. Pluck your meager harvest and carry it inside (after weeding and watering), knowing you’re doing the right thing by letting your garden grow “naturally,” and tell people how organic your vegetables are.

Discover the joy of caterpillars on your tomato plants. Note that they look like they should feel squishier, but that wouldn’t make killing them any easier. Decide that the best way to deal with them is to pluck them off the plants and throw them against the fence and hope that this gives them a concussion so that they forget where the tomato plants are and instead wander into the neighboring yard to be eaten by a dog.

Go on vacation. Forget to mention to the person feeding your cat that you have a garden. Come home to vegetables that have fallen off and provided extra fertilizer for the weeds, which now outnumber the plants in a 100 to 1 ratio. On the plus side, your previous musings about Plants vs Zombies has turned 180 degrees, and it turns out that these weeds probably would prevent zombies from getting to you because they are so dense and thick and have such sharp edges that any zombie who wandered through the garden would either become entangled in them or would wind up shredded.

It’s an early frost. All your plants are dead, but the weeds are doing stunningly well. Curse the weeds, then think about how well they grew. You must really have a green thumb. You can prove it next planting seasons when your garden is the envy of the block.

Repeat.