Children are like gardens, and in this analogy, I am totally unfit.

Which is why I will never be a parent–because evidently, when one is responsible for more beyond one’s own self, one cannot frolic about the continent for months on end, completely ignoring one’s offspring (even if one’s offspring happens to be a 20 square-foot plot of land in one’s backyard). I suppose while I was gone my husband would take an active role in the nurturing of our garden. Which was foolish, really. Aside from the initial tilling, he’s done nothing to help the garden flourish (doesn’t that sound an awful lot like pregnancy?).

I don’t know why I expected my husband to care for our baby–he never wanted kids [vegetables] in the first place. The only reason he even tilled a month ago is because he likes things that go “vroom” and I promised he’d be rewarded. He even told me when I left, “Don’t expect me to sit around here watching your garden all day watching the dirt–I have work to do. I probably won’t even get around to watering it.”

So I don’t know why I was so shocked when I got home and peeked in the backyard. Indeed, my children have taken my negligence as a personal affront, and are acting out to get more attention from me. In my absence, they’ve taken to hanging with the wrong crowd–real seedy, weedy sorts of characters. And by “weedy” I do mean weeds.

Six foot tall weeds, in particular.

Gone are my perfectly straight rows–they’ve become overrun with weeds and grass and ants, and a particularly ugle neon green sort of caterpillar. Seriously. Try–just try–to spot the tomato plant underneath all this foliage:

I spent four hours weeding this morning, and it’s only a drop in the dadgum proverbial bucket of what’s left to do. And I used to find gardening so…fulfilling.

Which is perhaps why I’m so overwhelmed. I mean, to go from this:

To this:

And back to this:

Well, that’s just depressing.

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