Gardening relaxes to point of insanity

I'm not sure what came over me. Maybe I needed something to do besides taking care of children, maybe it was the urge to get back to nature, or maybe it was temporary insanity, but a couple months ago, I decided to try a relaxing, new hobby: planting a vegetable garden in my yard.

"That's great, Hon," my husband said. "Just think of all of the money we'll save."

I knew he was humoring me, since most plants I bring home from the nursery have a lifespan lasting about as long as the amount of time it takes to pay for them at the checkout counter and drive home.

I decided the best thing to do was to borrow my neighbor's mail-order plant catalog since her yard always looked great, and I figured mail-order plants might be taken by surprise and safely buried in my yard before they knew where they were.

The catalog cover was encouraging with a picture of a healthy, happy family tending to their lush garden together. I flipped through the pages and picked out tomatoes, radishes, bell peppers, carrots and something I'm not completely sure was legal. Then I began filling out the form.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" my husband asked. "Remember the $50 Boston fern you bought that dropped all its leaves in two days?"

"That wasn't my fault," I said. "As soon as I got home, it changed from a low-maintenance plant into Howard Hughes. It made all sorts of unreasonable demands I couldn't possibly keep up with."

My garden arrived six weeks later, in three crates the size of shoeboxes.

"Stand back and don't step on it," I warned our kids as I picked up the boxes.

I placed the seedlings into the ground according to the instructions. When I finished, my husband came out.

"Where is it?" he asked.

"Very funny. Everyone knows that nurturing is the best part of gardening."

The next day, I dug trenches around each seedling for irrigation and encased them with wire mesh so they wouldn't be trampled. I spent the rest of the afternoon pulling weeds and watering each seedling by hand.

When I finished, I staggered into the house and collapsed on the sofa. According to the instruction guide, I still needed to mix up the special plant food formula and sprinkle it on each plant with a teaspoon. But I couldn't straighten up enough to stand.

The next day the booklet suggested I wake up before dawn to add fertilizer. I barely had time to make breakfast and take my son and daughter to school before I had to dredge the irrigation system and finish putting wire mesh around the corn seeds.

By the end of the week, every muscle in my body ached.

"You were right," my husband said. "Gardening was a great idea. I've never seen you look so relaxed."

I considered telling him that by my calculations our homegrown vegetables would be more expensive than, say, buying the entire produce section at the local grocery store. But I'm not that mean.

I just stared at him from my prone position on the sofa and decided that next time I wanted to try a relaxing new hobby, I'd take up aerobics and hire a gardener instead.

• Debbie Farmer is a humorist, mother and author. She can be reached at www.familydaze.com.