by Robert Dave Johnston

Created on: May 29, 2008   Last Updated: June 09, 2008

The alarm clock went off in my ear and I shot up in bed like a spring. It was Saturday, and today I would spend the day gardening with my beloved wife. I had procrastinated this task for weeks, but she was very good at constantly reminding me that every new home was enhanced and personalized with a garden. "Greenery soothes the soul," she says.

In my mind, the only soothing for my soul on a weekend was to watch sports on television. We do not see eye-to-eye on this. What a shock, right?

So, I got up and make some coffee and started to prepare for the gardening task at hand. This was a condo, so the "garden" was limited to a back porch where my wife wanted to plant some vegetables, as well as some various plants that came in different colors.

Yes, I am a gardening idiot ... but I love my wife. In three hours we worked arduously at setting the aisles of seeds for the vegetables in one side, and planting the others side-by-side in a rectangular vase roughly five feet in length. She was very pleased.

The misadventure was quick and drastic. Just when we were about finished and ready to go out for an afternoon walk, the phone rang. It was the condo association president. My wife listened quietly over the phone and, with a very blank stare, passed the phone to me.

What happened next is somewhat blurry, but the condo association president informed us that a biomedical waste building was being erected in the empty property adjacent to ours. Filled with horror, I went blank. I think I entered a gardening time warp of some sort because, in all honesty, I do not recall perpetrating the terrible deed that has become historic in our marriage.

In a few minutes, I regained my posture ... only to realize, that in my rage, I had taken out my frustration on - yes - the gardening work we had just completed. So there, in a display of epic proportions, were the broken vases, seeds everywhere and dirt coming in from the small patio all the way to the living room.

Needless to say, I slept in the "couch" for the next week. The biomedical facility eventually scrapped its plans to build next door to us, and the garden was beautifully re-planted.

But my wife keeps the incident in the vault of her scorn memory banks whenever I misbehave. What could I say except ... "yes dear."

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