Women's Work

Well, shoot. Looks like The Great Husband wins this debate -- I AM the one who has to get out there and garden. (But no one has ever accused me of speaking in dulcet tones. Never. Not once.)

The Brits are famous gardeners, of course. And my grandmother on my mother's side and my grandfather on my father's side did not possess merely a thumb in the color of growing things - their whole upper torsos and all fourteen hand phalanges were quite green. But I, myself, have had one and a half successful gardens. The best one ever was so researched and planned you'd have thought I was putting a space launch or a new subdivision into my summer schedule - and then the tomato forest that ensued gave gorgeous results - most of which turned into compost because I'm not so good with the harvest/put up for the winter/use it at every opportunity part of gardening.

And why?

Because harvest happens in the heat, in case you didn't know, and the heat, my friend, is a little foretaste of what happens to evil in the next life. And Brits don't have heat. They don't allow it. It's not polite.

Still ... there are plants out there again this year, and my poor husband has had to do women's work once more because his wife didn't do it. He planted some tomatoes, and some ... um ... (oh crap! I've forgotten what else!). I think I'd better go water the garden today. And speak to the goats while I'm out there. I feel very silly talking to the plants.

Talking to plants makes them grow, especially if you are a woman, according to an experiment by the Royal Horticultural Society.

Women gardeners' voices speed up growth of tomato plants much more than men's, it found.

In an experiment run over a month, they found that tomato plants grew up to two inches taller if they were serenaded by the dulcet tones of a female rather than a male.