This is why I don't garden.

So I went to Lowes yesterday and very optimistically bought a lovely basil plant and a grape tomato plant. We live in Florida, land of the HOT stickiness, so apparently planting things this time of year is not as strange as it sounds. My husband gives me crap about my "gardening" skills because I managed to dry my lovely lavender and other herbs before I even harvested them. (In other words, I left them out in the hot Florida sun with no water and they shriveled up and died. The lavender smelled amazing though, even all dried and dead.) Anywho, I bought a basil plant yesterday and a lovely INDOOR hanging planter for it. We already had the plant hook there and I figured that hanging the basil would keep it away from baby hands and doggie noses. It also keeps the plant right in front of my face and increases the likelihood that I will not kill it. The basil seems pretty happy in its new home.

Today was for the tomato. I would love to grow the tomato indoors too, away from pesky bugs and lizards and frogs and the other Outside Things, but apparently this is not an option with vegetables. I repurposed a lovely patio pot for my little tomato plant and was all about planting it this afternoon while the baby slept. I even braved my way all the way down to the edge of the yard to grab a bag of potting soil left back there from the last gardening adventure. There appeared to be a large spider at the top of the soil, but I shook the bag around a bit and he didn't move, so I went ahead and dumped the soil into the pot. The spider got lost in the shuffle and I didn't give him too much thought since he was dead. Uh huh. Until he wasn't dead anymore and came to the top of the pot! YIKES! This guy is HUGE and he moves FAST. I generally think that spiders are pretty cool and they eat other bugs, so that's a plus. I would go out of my way to save a spider and its web if I could. But this guy, he is a little harder to love... he's BIG... and scary... I think that he could maybe kill me... and now I've brought him from the tippy back of the yard right up next to the house. Great. I'm gonna have nightmares...

I think that I maybe need to accept that I am not a gardener and resign myself to paying for overpriced, lesser quality tomatoes... stay tuned for the next episode of Jamie vs. the spider.