Home & Garden

In a life already dog-eared by a laundry list of bad decisions, actions and ideas, this one makes me the Obi Won Kenobi of dumb, a Jedi Knight trained in the ancient art of the asinine.

So let what I’m about to share serve as a lesson. Gardening with babies sounds cute but it only leads to trouble — not to mention potential divorce proceedings.

It was a day like any other. I was playing Mr. Mom, babysitting Jellybean (AKA ThunderButt) while My Lovely Wife was away giving a lecture to a bevy of enthralled JSU nursing students.

Having already enjoyed her mid-morning nap, sucked down a bottle as though she’d been lost in the Mojave Desert and blown-out a handful of diapers, Jellybean was running low on entertainment options.

So we went wandering through the garden.

It was a lovely day. The sun wasn’t too bright, the mosquitoes had not detected the presence of innocent blood, and I still had a reserve of strength in my good baby-totin’ arm.

After giving a brief tutorial on the dangers of eating angel trumpets, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. My crepe myrtle was under siege. Upon closer inspection, I spotted the culprit — powdery mildew.

Good gardeners have a sixth sense.

Like dogs and bees smelling fear, the true yard warriors simply know when a plant’s in distress. They can hear a leaf-munching Japanese beetle at a thousand paces and will attack it Ninja style, hurling squirts of Sevin Bug Killer with the deathly precision of Chinese throwing stars.

It’s all instinct.

Which was what I was working on when, without thinking, I leapt into action. Grabbing the closest weapon at my disposal, I battled back that mildew with a twitchy trigger finger and barrage of curse words that would’ve made Borat blush.

It wasn’t until the nearby squeal of brakes pulled me from my madness that I realized one hand nestled a napping baby while the other hand held a now-empty bottle of fungicide.

Thankfully the beat-up Chevy pick-up backing out of my yard belonged to the Jacksonville Water Authority and not DHR, else I would’ve had some explaining to do.

And that’s not a conversation anybody wants to have.

"Uhhh … no officer. I didn’t realize that three-in-one garden sprays could be hazardous to the health and welfare of my baby, whom I love more than life itself and would never, ever intentionally endanger … And yes, I do realize that just because something says ‘garden safe’ does not necessarily mean that I should spritz my child with it … ’Course, everybody says she’s ‘Growin’ like a weed.’

"Could you please loosen these cuffs. My fingers are turning blue."

But Jellybean was fine. She didn’t even wake up until midway through the 40-minute soaking her Big Dumb Daddy gave her in order to remove any fungicide residue — real or imagined — from her tender skin.

It’s tough being both a gardener and a parent. These are two disciplines that just don’t work well together.

Gardeners like dirt, while babies require a sterile environment (save for the one that brought ‘em into this world in the first place). They demand proper hygiene from their handlers, while my fingernails won’t be clean again until November.

Wonder if that’ll get me out of midnight diaper changes?