There's a wonderful passage in John McEnroe's autobiography in which his then wife, musician Patti Smyth, is consoling the distraught John about his guitar playing.
McEnroe, who in this phase of his life was no longer the world's number one tennis player, had reasonably assumed that the determination that had made him the top man on the court, could also bring him to the zenith of rock music.
"John," says Patti. "You don't get to be John McEnroe and Ronnie Wood in the same lifetime."
I take solace from these wise words every time I ponder my ineptitude as a gardener in comparison to my reasonable level of competency as a PR practitioner.
Things in the garden have gotten quite bad of late.
My neighbors now openly mock the brown patches on my lawn, the odd shaped bell peppers on my stunted plants, and the poorly-chosen placement of my strawberry patch.
I bought a new miniature palm last week. "Oh, we bought one of those and it flourished!" said my neighbor Adelle, as I knelt to plant it in a pot on the front deck. "Mind you, we did remember to water it!" she added, with an evil chuckle.
The truth is, I'm a pretty terrible gardener. I love the simplicity of laboring with soil and plants, and the joy of harvesting the fruits of my hard work. But I'm not good at it.
My front garden really does have brown patches, despite many hours spent attempting to fix the performance of the sprinklers. (Adelle has taken to secretly watering those patches out of fear that my lawn will bring down the reputation of the neighborhood).
And the truth is, that corner of the garden WAS very sunny when I planted my strawberry plants there one Sunday afternoon. But that was possibly the only hour of sun that little patch gets all day. I think I harvested a total of eight strawberries this summer. None of them were edible.
And yes, my bell peppers only seem to grow in two dimensions: wide and round. Not deep.
I do, however, take solace from the fact that my tomatoes are pretty fantastic. So fantastic, in fact, that William has taken to feeding himself directly from the plants when we're out in the garden pottering about together.
The fact that my plants produce so few tomatoes that once William has had his one or two per day, there are none left over for Emma and I doesn't bother me. All I care about is that William thinks daddy grows lovely tomatoes.
So where do I go from here? Well, I continue gardening of course. After all, John McEnroe recorded an album of music despite Metallica's Lars Ulrich saying he "couldn't sing to save his life".
In fact, since I looked up the symptoms of the brown leaves on my orange tree (caused by a lack of water) and started watering it, it's really looking quite good.
Next year, I hope to beat my record crop of oranges from that tree. My current record is one orange, grown in 2009. The orange was green when it fell from the tree, and never turned orange. I'm pretty sure I can beat that in 2011.
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