A Beginner's Guide to Gardening

I am so glad to be back! It's been quite a long time since you’ve heard a story about one of Zack’s little disasters. I had no idea I was scarier than Mrs. Martin. You guys don’t think I’m scary, right? Good. Now it’s time to stop being so self-centered and start this story.

It was really hot. Almost too hot to work. Unfortunately, our moms didn’t think so. We were both asked to do the garden over at Mrs. Martin’s house. Yay, what a fun way to spend the weekend. Grumbling, we got the tools out of the garden shed and began the work.

First up was airing the soil. I took one of those weird, three-toothed things and began to claw at the soil. Zack, on the other hand, grabbed a few of them and attached them to a stick. Then he proceeded to call Ivana (my dog, I might add), attached them to her collar, and had her run around the garden with the sticks scraping at the soil. The end result was a lot of uprooted plants and a scratched-up lawn. Plus, Ivana’s fur was an absolute mess. I have no idea why I was so insistent on a white Pomeranian. You can actually see when they get messy.

After a huge debate, plus 5 games of one on one basketball, we decided that Zack would continue with the lawn, and I would give Ivana a shower. Once she was done, he would groom her fur while I would prune the bushes. With this hopefully successful arrangement, we got onto our jobs.

Zack grabbed a shovel and went to start weeding the rosebush. There were a lot of dandelions growing around him. It was hard to focus. Soon, the shovel was lying around, and Zack was running from here to there plucking dandelions and blowing them away. All of them came into my face. “Zack! Stop playing games and get on with your work. Ivana’s shower is almost done. You’ve got to have the weeding done by the time I’m there.” “Fine, fine. You continue cleaning Ivana. I’m almost done.” “Yeah, you’ve been so busy playing in them, you plucked them all away.” “Ugh! Whatever.”

He grabbed the shovel and stuck it into the soil again. Right where he kept it. Under the best rosebush. And he hit it at the roots. Well, it looks like the garden is going from bad to worse. I hope Mrs. Martin kept her receipts and warranty card. (And yes, I know it’s stupid to make a warranty card for a garden, but you definitely need it in a situation like this!)

Water had clearly taken its toll on Ivana and she ran away from me, straight into the garden. All the mud Zack had scraped out came onto her fur, and she was once again a muddy mess. And no way was Zack doing better. He tried to weed the herb garden. He pulled out the mints, and all the other stuff. And of course the weeds. Then he took a random selection of plants and repotted them.

Now all that was left to do was prune the bushes. As promised, I took the clippers and set to work. Zack took the water and filled up a bucket. Then he added the bubbles, and plopped Ivana inside, with a few treats in his hand to keep her happy. While Zack was actually able to give her a shower, I was struggling to prune the bushes. What the heck, I don’t even know what pruning is! All I know is that prune is a fruit, which tastes… awkward.

I looked up pruning. Turns out it's just removing excess and/or dead branches. That was easy. I grabbed the clippers and began cutting the branches. Once I got the extra branches out, I moved onto the dead ones. The only thing was, after being uprooted, all the branches were dead. So, well, I just had to make on snip at the bottom. Well, that was simple.

After a long day of effort, all we had was a dead garden. “Hey, um, mom? We killed your garden for you!” “Thank you, Zack. I have no idea how much effort it would take to do it myself. Now I can just call the renovators and have it redone.”

Wow. Well, I guess we should have known. Well, at least we don’t have to send Ivana to the groomer’s anymore. I wouldn’t call today a complete waste!