The trouble with people who garden

I have come to realize that gardening is just another form of pissing contest.

People who garden get off on bragging about how much bigger their garden is than so-and-so's, or they have the perfect variety of produce, because so-and-so is growing Silver King corn or bigboy tomatoes and who likes those? And look at how many tomatoes I have, cause I know how to grow tomatoes, yes I do. Or, the gardener grows something he doesn't like to eat because it was requested and makes a big deal out of how magnanimous he is for this act of altruism.


Furthermore, people who garden have problems with their understanding of amounts. You cannot tell a gardener to send you just a few of something, because no one will eat it but you. Oh no, the gardener will hear "Send me..." and that's it. His brain tunes out after that. Or, more likely, he was sprinting towards the garden, bushel basket in hand by that point. The only thing left to do is to prepare yourself to be covered up in fresh produce, and if you don't compost, you might as well start, because unless you want to get into canning and freezing, half of it is likely to rot before you eat it. I don't care how many mozzarella, tomato and basil salads you think you can eat, you will be sick of them before you are out of tomatoes.

Besides, I have better things to do with my time than spend 4 hrs shelling butter peas, merely to end up with only about 1.5 qts of the damned things. Yes, they are good. Yes, they taste better than lima beans (almost anything tastes better than lima beans) but if I wanted to shell peas, I would have my own damned garden. (Yes, I could have tossed them in the compost pile, but I have a thing about wasting food, so I shelled peas and watched all of my netflix dvds.)

On the plus side, I told the family gardener that my side of the family would be glad of some fresh produce, so when you see them on the girls birthday, be sure and load them up. insert evil laugh