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Thursday, May 27, 2004

poor tomatoes

Generally? When you have plants? And, you know, you live in California where you get basically no natural moisture on the ground between May and September? Generally it's a good idea to water the plants. Who would have thought. Huh.

We bought tomatoes and planted them on Sunday. What happened was that we tore down my son's playhouse, and when we lifted up the floor, we found that the gophers had done a splendid job of aerating the soil underneath for us. So we thought, what the heck, it's only a few dollars, we'll buy a dozen tomato plants and plant them in this nicely tilled weed-free red soil. And we did. And we watered them. This was Sunday; I resolved to water the tomatoes twice a day. Monday they got watered, twice. Tuesday, I had my son water them at around 3:00 and that was all. Wednesday I, um, forgot that I had tomatoes at all. Until about an hour ago when my husband asked me if I'd watered them yet today. Oops.

I have, on occasion, heard women say that they couldn't possibly have children yet, because they can't even keep their plants alive. Ladies, gather close, I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

Children are way easier to care for than plants.

I am not kidding. Sure, children require a lot more attention. And there's that whole diapers/shoes/paying for college thing. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work. But the fact is that you're never going to just forget you have a child. Even if, against all maternal instincts (like happens to me sometimes in nightmares), you did manage to forget you had one in your house, the child would remind you in short order. A child will not just sit there and wither and die silently, waiting for you to remember its existence of your own accord. Whereas plants -- my plants especially -- are doomed to do exactly that. That is, if you aren't the meticulous sort of person who actually makes it part of her routine to put water on the darn things, rather than waiting for that maternal instinct thing to kick in. Which, let's face it, it won't. And that means a bleak, short existence for my poor tomato plants.