I just don’t get it. Gardeners are a strange bunch because they vacillate between self-imposed guilt and resentment. I feel sorry for them. Let me explain.

Have you ever seen a true gardener throw away their produce? They would rather die than to toss a single tomato into the woods or let the little juicy oval just die there on the vine. Not on your life. Why not? Because . . . well . . . it’s just not right . . . after all that work! I mean, you’d feel – terrible. So, the true gardener is left with two options: you either eat and eat and eat until you’re sick of the stuff with diarrhea(s), or, you tote your precious little veggies all around the neighborhood and to church and to school and to wherever people are gathered – and GIVE them away for free. Why? Because you can’t stand the guilt and shame of letting them just die all alone, uneaten, unloved, unharvested.

But then you end up resenting everyone that you give them to because they didn’t work their rear-end off, planting, watering, tending, pruning, cultivating, harvesting. The resentment escalates because the true gardener knows that others are waiting on you, no, they expect you to come by and GIVE them what they don’t have to work for. And that is what drives the true gardener crazy. But . . . the same thing will happen next year. The purist gardener will again plant too much (it’s an addiction that has no cure), spiral downward into guilt over what to do with too much, resentfully give it all away to people who don’t give a hoot about gardening, then feel scorn for them for waiting on you to give them what you feel guilty about. Sick.

I tell you – it’s a perennial disease that has infected so many with this terrible blight. Let us pray that the Jolly Green Giant will soon find a cure that can rid this insufferable, cyclical disorder so that we can all find peace and rest.

What’s that smell coming from the garage? It’s brats on the grill. Got a go – see ya.