This is not a bad thing, despite the fact that she grows only ornamental plants and refuses to cultivate the One True Vegetable (white corn, if you're curious). When we bought our house, the yard looked something like the worst parts of Afghanistan, only scarier. After just a few years and $20,000 in seeds, it looks more like the Florida Everglades…only scarier.
No, seriously, we have a beautiful yard. It's so gorgeous that last year it was on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Foreign dignitaries drop by to have their photographs taken next to our modest pond, which is based on the fountains at Versailles (though a bit larger). I'd link to the Google satellite image, but they blocked it because so many people were gawking that it clogged their servers.
That's all pretty cool. Not everyone can live in a showpiece house with a showpiece garden and a showpiece family. I wish I could claim that I do, but I manage to clutter up the house so it looks more like Skid Row right before a big police sweep. Still, the garden makes a nice refuge from all that.
The problem is, my wife seems to think that a garden should contain a bunch of things that actually grow. And although I didn't realize it when we moved in, growing things requires water.
“So what?” you ask. “Isn't that what sprinklers are for?”
Me too. Not realizing that this marks us as indelibly, hopelessly, cluelessly male. Because sprinklers aren't the right way to water plants. Not if you're a true gardener with a thumb so green that it puts Amazon parrots to shame. Not if you have, um…envy.
No, the true gardener waters everything by hand.
So what's the big deal about that? Why not just let my wife have her fun? If she wants to squirt plants, or write her name in the snow, that's her business, right? She says it relaxes her. A relaxed wife is Good with a capital G. Go for it, honey!
Sounds sensible. Except that this is a woman who has no concept of the term "water damage." Never mind that she grew up in rainy, foggy San Francisco and spent a decade living in sunny Seattle (well, it was sunny the day she foolishly decided to move there). Never mind that if you left a lawn chair or a marble statue out for three days in one of those places, it would immediately develop mold and start to stink like a car salesman's promises. Never mind the arm's-length list of possessions that were destroyed by mist the first day she arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Never mind that she's developed a habit where every day, summer and winter, she leaves the bathroom window open “to let the steam out” despite the fact that we live in a broiling semi-desert and our house is so dry that even the sponges are cracked. All those learning experiences are instantly forgotten when she gets hold of a hose.
So here's what my summer weekends are like: I get up, grab the newspaper and a glass of juice, and wander out to the patio to soak up (and I use the term advisedly) a bit of sun. Spreading the paper out to my favorite section (the kiddie pages), I settle down and take a sip.
Suddenly, behind me, there is the familiar hiss of a nozzle.
Before I can react, the paper is sopping and my juice glass is full of water. You see, my wife's aim isn't so hot. And, more important, she just doesn't care. In her world, water is this magic stuff that appears from nowhere without any apparent source or reason. If it lands on plants it makes them grow; if it lands somewhere else it just evaporates. It can't possibly cause any damage, because it's “The stuff of life.”
So I sit there, dripping, with my breakfast ruined and a torn newspaper leaking ink onto my hands. And without missing a beat, I take the situation in hand like the commanding patriarch I am:
“Sweetie? Could you bring me the shampoo?”
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