OUR TINY YARD IN TOWN always disappointed my wife, Jackie. There was never room for a real garden. Imagine her joy when we bought our 10-acre spread. "Honey", she said, "now I can plant big time!" Oh, I was happy for her. But somewhere in the back of my head growled a sardonic voice with a Brooklyn accent: "Hey Einstein, guess who's gonna do the grunt work?!" I'm not averse to manual labour, but digging up 1,600 square feet of prairie sod by hand is not my idea of recreation. I wish I shared Jackie's enthusiasm for gardening, but I can't tell wildflowers from weeds. Heaven help me if I accidentally weed-whack one of her babies. And do not ever give me a spray bottle of Roundup and ask me to tackle the weeds. Take last year, when I terminally scalped a big chunk of lawn behind the house. We covered the disaster area with a rock garden/patio. After I hauled tons of boulders from a farmer's field to our backyard and added $800-worth of white gravel to make it all look pretty, Jackie planted cute little whatchamacallits around the edges. While recovering from my hernia operation, I realized I'd forgotten to kill what was left of the grass, now covered by piles of decorative rock. "Naah, it's dead, flattened, squashed", I mused. A week later, the little green beggars started coming up. Out came the Roundup. I figured dandelions and other weeds were fair game too. I saw a weedy bush poking out from between the rocks. "Better get that one," I thought. Squirt went the Roundup. "Hmm, it's pretty big. Maybe two squirts. Oh yeah, that one's a goner." Just then, Jackie caught sight of my handiwork. "NO!!! NOT MY CITRONELLA BUSH! Mark, don't tell me you poisoned it." Oh-oh. I ran for the hose, trying not to panic. "Aw, Honey, it sure looked like a weed. Honest. Sorry." I doused the plant. "I'm sure it'll be OK. Look! I think it's coming around." By this time, the wilted citronella was in its death throes. Jackie was incensed. "Put that stuff away! Go do something useful. Rototill the garden." She wanted me far away from her plants. Hey, I'm sorry! It was an accident, really ... or was it? Maybe, I pondered, deep down in my twisted psyche I'm a serial plant killer pretending to be a bumbling horticultural nincompoop. Yeah, that's it. I try to suppress the urge, but somewhere, sometime, the opportunity to rub out a poor, hapless plant, albeit accidentally, will arise and there I'll be-heart racing, palms sweating and a flawless alibi at my lips: Gee, I thought it was a weed. "Are you going to rototill the garden or not?" Jackie was still furious. "Sure. I like rototilling. Those razor sharp blades ripping and tearing open the ground like a wild animal devouring its prey really get me pumped. Say, any plants there I should avoid?" Instantly, Jackie's expression changed from anger to the weird, "I think I married a homicidal maniac" one. "You'd better stay out of the garden for now," she said slowly, staring at me in a clinical sort of way. "Sure, Hon, whatever." I turned away, stifling a smile. I figured my ruse had worked. But Jackie's super-sensitive BS meter had detected a slight pitch-shift in my voice, not to mention my elevated heart rate. I was doomed. "Mark, those boulders need to be moved back a few feet." "All of them? When?" "Now." From the nether regions of my brain came a familiar voice: "Nice going, Einstein!" - MARK BEHREND