My wife and I went to the garden center to pick out plants and flowers for the beds in front of our house. We had had potted plants which died. Then we planted azalea bushes, and, yes, they too died. Before all that was a mess of monkey grass, which I pulled out stalk by stalk with my hands.

Photo by LisaHause.com

In other words, these two patches of earth had become a proverbial thorn in our sides. To make matters worse, they are all one can see when standing at the kitchen sink, where I spend a good bit of time.

Whenever I would stand at the sink, I would say to my wife, “We really need to get some flowers and plants out there.

Should we call a landscape architect and get some ideas?” Sometimes my wife would say, “Sure!” Other times she would say, “Why don’t we just go to the plant store and pick some things out?” The latter made me a bit nervous. I don’t know a thing about plants, indoor or outdoor. In fact, I have whatever the opposite of a green thumb is.

I’m spending a lot more time at that sink these days with this whole pandemic thing, so I suppose my mentioning needing plants and flowers reached a tipping point of sorts, because one morning my wife said, “Get your shoes. We’re going to the garden center.”

And off to the garden center we went. We wandered the outdoor aisles, reading the names of the plants and flowers and weighing the benefits and burdens of the overwhelming variety of choices. We must have filled and emptied our cart a dozen times before finally settling on three types of plants to fill our garden.

When we got home, it was too late to plant; the next morning my wife said, “You ready to plant your garden?” I didn’t pay much mind to the use of the word “your” when she said it. I was a little surprised she expected me to do the planting. I’m not particularly strong, and the ground is not particularly soft. But I said, “Sure,” and headed out to get planting.

I did not like it. At all. It was really hot. The ground was really hard. And I can be really stubborn. So even though my wife kept asking if she could help, I kept insisting I could do it on my own. If I had to do it, I was going to do it my way, in my time. I kept on digging and planting and telling myself, it’ll be done soon, and then my gardening days will be behind me.

The next morning, my wife did a little replanting. My lines were off, which I could have predicted. Geometry is not my strong suit. But viola, we had a garden. Mission accomplished. Fait accompli.
Or so I thought.

It’s not that I didn’t know that gardens need to be tended and watered and weeded and all of that. It’s just that I have no interest in doing such things, and I had no clue that I had signed up for that duty just by looking out a window. But my wife kept asking me, every morning, if I had watered the plants yet.

t always went the same way:
“Have you watered your garden?”
“Nope.”
“Did you water your garden yet?”
“I did not.”
“Are you planning on watering?”
“No.”
And after each no, she would water the garden.
One day, she was extra frustrated by my negative reply.
“Are you ever going to water your garden?”
“My garden?”
“You said you wanted a garden.”
“I said I wanted a garden. I did not say I wanted to garden.”

She was silent for a minute, then she laughed. And there it was, the classic marital misunderstanding.

If she had told me that filling that blank space with those plants and flowers would have meant daily maintenance, I would have either left it alone or filled it with a carefree ground cover. Or rocks. Rocks can be pretty, right?

It was a big moment for us. We both shook our heads. We both laughed. We both realized we had a real marital “a-ha” moment on our hands.

And ever since then, it’s become a bit of a shorthand for us. If we can tell we are getting into the misunderstanding zone, one of us says, “I want a garden, not to garden,” or “Ah, I see. You want a garden. You don’t want to garden.”

It might seem silly. But it’s kind of a trade secret when it comes to successful marriages. You have to say what you mean and have to not just hear but actually listen to what your partner is saying.

So the next time your partner mentions how much she likes pasta machines or how much he is interested in crocheting, make sure you get the whole picture. Otherwise, you just may find yourself with a very frustrated partner as she looks at the dust-gathering pasta maker she was hoping you would use or you discover the crochet needles at the bottom of the junk drawer that he was hoping you would master.

Sometimes, one little word makes all the difference.

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