Here's to unconventional methods

So anyway, my beloved is tending her small garden, clearing debris, assessing the progress of the peppers and onions, and giving the limp tomatoes an extra blast with the garden hose, when she notices the thriving condition of the 11-year-old's bean plant.

"Look at that," she says with a mixture of marvel and jealously. "And he's not even taking care of it."

She's right about that. The tiny bare patch in the lawn where he hastily planted the seed is as dry as a church sermon. But the plant is strong and hearty. It's practically taunting the selections withering from heat in my wife's vegetable bed. If it had fingers I can guarantee it would be pointing an L-shaped "loser" sign at them from its bean plant forehead.

While my wife was planning her garden the 11-year-old had expressed an interest in nurturing a bean seed on his own. She and I traded a knowing smile, because this is the same kid who promised to regularly feed and water our menagerie of rescued stray cats if only we would keep them. He swore to us he would stand watch over them day and night, and if one of them even looked like it was thinking about coughing up a hairball he'd be right there with a stretcher and an IV. He'd even take its temperature, even though he knows cat thermometers aren't oral, and doing it would make him gag. Three years later, while the hairballs and occasional accidents are gagging us, the boy is usually nowhere to be found.

"Please?" he begged. "I'll water my plant and take care of it, and I'll make it grow a million beans, and we can have a big mess of them for dinner every night."

No thank you. Beans and I have this really weird ongoing relationship I don't care to discuss in any sort of detail. Suffice it to say, when I wanted to add "for beans and their aftermath" after "for richer or poorer" in our wedding vows, my wife threatened to break off our engagement.

So she gave the child a single bean seed, and told him its growth would be totally his responsibility, and she wouldn't help because responsibility builds strong character in men, something women appreciate, and then she stared straight at me but I looked down and pretended to be too busy admiring the anemic cucumbers to get the message. The 11-year-old acted very serious, polishing the seed lovingly against his shirt, then painstakingly surveying the garden to determine the best spot for it. That devotion lasted all of 37 seconds, until his friend stopped by and suggested they go swimming. He kicked out a nearby clod of dirt, threw in the seed, stamped the clod back over it and ran to get a towel and sunblock.

Now it's growing sturdy and richly green through cracked, dusty soil just a foot or two from my wife's tilled, fertilized, watered and cultivated garden. It's been trod on, has taken shots from landing Frisbees and is generally abused, and it's still holding up better than Boy George's last drug conviction.

"This isn't right," my wife tells me. "Look at the way I obsess over my garden, and his bean plant grows like a weed. Maybe you should take over."

She must really be discouraged, because she knows better than that. I've told her the story (and I tend to ramble, so she usually has to clear her entire schedule for it) about the time I bought a house plant during my bachelor days. I had never been good with plants - they wilt upon my touch (or is it my breath?) - so I told the plant guy I wanted one that was indestructible, one that I couldn't possibly kill. He looked me over, brought out this feisty-looking thing with thick fronds covered with thorns, and said even torture wouldn't destroy it. He said to prove it, if I brought it back dead within a year he'd eat his How can I help you? work smock. The smock looked like pretty durable nylon, so my guess is that he's still chewing.

The boy approaches and stands directly on his bean plant as he asks his mother what she's doing, even though the hose in her hand and the water drowning her spinach make it obvious.

"I'm taking care of my vegetables," she says. "How about you?"

He realizes what he's stepping on, and and it springs back up as he jumps off. "Hey, watch this," he says, and proceeds to push a long string of saliva out of his mouth, letting it fall until it just touches the top of his plant before slurping it up and back into his mouth.

"There, I watered it," he says to his mother as he grins and ambles away.

It's not a conventional method, and it may take longer, but what does she have to lose?