My wife loves to garden. She’s not particularly good at it, but she refuses to give up on developing her green thumb. I see a lot of myself in her, especially when it comes to writing and my dreams of being a writer. There’s the unrelenting climb to the top, a lot of failure, and a supportive spouse who is tired and just wants you to give up and get a real job. We’re both stubborn and supportive to a fault. I for one am ready to end this cycle of toxic positivity. So, with that in mind, I pulled my wife away from a daisy on its deathbed and demanded that she rank all 49 plants from the original Plants vs. Zombies on how likely they would survive her garden.
49. Flower Pot
PopCap counts this as a plant. My wife refuses to rank this since, ‘pots are not plants.’ For someone so adamant about following the rules of this list, you would think she could apply that kind of discipline to plant care. She’s mad now. I’m just going to stick the pot here on the list.
48. Pumpkin
“This one is just like our sex life,” my wife says, catching me completely off guard. I ask her to elaborate, and she says, “It’s all saggy and already dead.” I can’t believe the nerve, but I have to agree that this one goes here on the technicality of it being dead.
T-47 Puff-Shroom
“Oh, that little guy is so cute,” says my wife, who hates mushrooms. I imply that she’d probably just step on him and not even realize it. She does not agree and is now walking through the room swearing up and down that none of my articles have ever made her laugh. And she just stepped on a stray LEGO block. Thank you, LEGO.
T-47 Gatling Pea
She’s crying in the other room, so I’m going to do the next one without her. The Gatling Pea is a hard-nosed soldier, but as a PVZ veteran he’ll need our support once he’s done fighting for Dave’s garden. My wife’s gardening skills are the least of this guy’s worries with this current administration in the office.
T-47 Coffee Bean
Okay, she’s back. This woman is a coffee fiend (as am I). I think we can both agree that the Coffee Bean’s time in the garden would be very short.
T-47 Snow Pea
Oh crap. My wife just scrolled up and saw the Gatling Pea entry. Now I’m some, “big liberal pussy who paid money to go to comedy school.” She just stormed out of the room again. Real mature. Her heart may be made of ice, but there’s no way she could keep Snow Pea from melting in her shitty little garden.
T-47 Winter Melon
While we’re on the subject of frozen hearts, we might as well put Winter Melon here. She told me recently that she doesn’t like watermelon. Says it’s not crunchy enough. Who wants a crunchy watermelon?
T-47 Ice-Shroom
I’ve calmed down a little bit. I think she has too. I could hear her hammering ice out of our ice maker. It’s old and all the ice melts together quickly, so you have to chip away at it to free up a single piece of ice. All this reminds me of the Ice-Shroom. He’s the one frozen plant in PVZ who would not melt, because she would likely take a hammer to him to ice her tea.
T-47 Lily Pad
She’s barely scraping by in the garden. Do you think she is going to have the know-how to keep a pond going? The poor Lily Pad is DOA.
T-47 Fume-Shroom
She’s finally back and she does not like the look of the Fume-Shroom. “Ew, is that mushroom spitting on those zombies,” my wife asks as she munches on a pickle. “I’d for sure plug that hole with something. Can you do that in your cute little photoshop that you play with instead of coming upstairs at night to play with me.” Sure can, dear. Sure can.
T-47 Blover
I like Blover a lot, but when my wife gets the weed whacker out anything goes. This cute little guy is getting caught in that path of destruction for sure. I’m going to let her do the next few.
T-47 Melon-Pult
“A watermelon that launches another watermelon. That’s perfect! I don’t have to kill it myself.”
T-47 Cherry Bomb
“I LOVE cherries. They have a little crunch to them, and I like chewing on the pit. I can tie a knot in cherry stems with my tongue, but my husband has no idea. He doesn’t know much about me anymore.”
T-47 Grave Buster
She just ran away crying. What happened? That was going so well. Did she see the butt-plug in the Fume-Shroom? Shit. I should go check on her, but I need to finish this list. My wife leaves a lot of junk around her garden. An unfortunate truth for Grave Buster who is likely to eat anything gravestone shaped.
T-47 Magnet-Shroom
My wife has taken up woodworking in the yard as well. Great for her having a new hobby. Not so good for the Magnet-Shroom.
T-47 Cob Cannon
She’s still crying. I am going to pop her a bowl of popcorn (her favorite). Obviously, Cob Cannon doesn’t stand a chance with my popcorn-loving wife.
T-47 Spikeweed
“Ok, I’m back. My husband can be sweet when he’s not being a complete asshole. Ok, this guy is spikey, I don’t like spikes in my garden. I like to garden barefoot. I’d cover this spikey little guy with a pile of dirt.”
T-47 Spikerock
“This guy evolves from the last spike guy? Is this Pokémon? He’s terrifying, Good thing I keep a flip flop on the porch for bugs and other gross issues that arise. I call it my yard flip flop.”
T-47 Plantern
“So, it’s a lantern? Seems redundant, I’ve already got wire lights strung around the garden. My yard flip flop probably got stuck on that scary spike Pokémon, so I’ll toss my trusty yard rock at this guy to try and shoo him away.”
T-47 Imitater
“The fuck is that? A mime potato? Fuck, my garden flip flop and my garden rock are out of reach. Where’s my garden gun?”
T-47 Torchwood
“A fire stump? No fires in my garden. Where’s the hose?”
T-47 Tangle Kelp
Tangle Kelp just sounds like something that is going to kill my other plants. I can just throw it away and not feel bad, right? No one kills my plants, except for me occasionally by accident.”
T-47 Potato Mine
“Is this guy related to that mime? Honestly, I am out of ammo and don’t want to find out. I’ll just let this guy rot in the ground. I wonder what my husband photoshopped into that spitting mushroom guy from earlier.”
T-47 Gloom-Shroom
She discovered the butt plug gag up top and now she’s packing her bags to go to her mother’s. Really sucks she can’t take a joke. Better pack the rest of her plugs, which ironically would be enough to stop up a Gloom-Shroom.
T-47 Scaredy-Shroom
She’s so full of shit about, ‘no fires in the garden.’ She lights fires all the time. Tree limbs, mushrooms, really anything that can catch fire is not safe…
T-47 Umbrella Leaf
…Including the very flammable Umbrella Leaf.
T-47 Sea-Shroom
After those last few entries, I came to my senses and went to the other room to talk to my wife. She agreed to stay, as long as I spend less time photoshopping. You’ll just have to imagine this Sea-Shroom being held underwater until the last air bubble comes up.
T-47 Cactus
Things are really cooling off here. My wife really appreciated me not photoshopping the last photo. Here is another. I wanted to shop a cactus impaled by another cactus and bleeding to death, but I love my wife way too much to photoshop when I promised not to.
T-47 Wall-Nut
I didn’t even have to do anything to this one. Thank you PopCap for having enough foresight to put a dying plant in your game and potentially save my marriage.
T-47 Garlic
My wife is honestly not the biggest Garlic fan in the world. She said I could photoshop this one, but I refuse to do that. Sure, it would be fun to mince this guy into pieces with the lasso tool and then float the pieces out into separate layers. The finishing touch would be finding a PNG of a good sharp knife to add to the photo. Must resist the urge to photoshop. This is a test. She is testing me.
T-47 Peashooter
My wife is taking a nap, so I am on my own for these next few plants. I love the Peashooter (almost as much as I love my wife). This guy is like the mascot of Plants vs. Zombies. Like how my wife is the mascot of this marriage. She would for sure kill this guy. Probably from overwatering or some other innocent way. Must resist the urge to shop. What if I just painted over his eyes and used the “X” from the Road Rage font to imply he is dead? I’m not technically photoshopping anything. All I’m doing is painting and writing on the photo.
T-47 Repeater
That wasn’t so bad. For Repeater what if I just folate his top part into a separate layer and paint the edge of the stems? Now it looks like he was hit by a weed whacker. It’s still not photoshopping if I don’t put in a full effort, right?
T-47 Chomper
Chomper is always eating things, so it’s only natural that he would choke on something in my wife’s garden. Let’s lengthen his neck and add a huge lump in the middle. For good measure, let’s grab some water drop PNGs to imply that he’s trying to hack up my wife’s garden flip flop. Notice his shade of blue grow darker as his soul is choked out of him.
T -47 Sun-Shroom
Lasso. Float. Lasso. Float. Lasso. Float. Lasso. Float. Lasso. Float. Lasso. Float. Oh uhm, sorry. Sun-Shroom is for sure getting run over by a lawn mower.
T-47 Hypno-Shroom
I’m not saying my wife eats mushrooms willy nilly, but the Hypno-Shroom would remind her of the unicorn drink from Starbucks. She slurps those damn things down. The similar colors would likely lead to her taking a big bit of this poor fellow. Dimple erase tool for this one.
T-47 Doom-shroom
My wife has finally awoken, and I was right. It was a test. She is not too happy about my disregard for her desires (the multi-butt plug shop of the Gloom-Shroom didn’t help either). She says she’s leaving and taking the kids. Marriage is tough. This Doom-Shroom locked in a bottle perfectly captures how I feel right now. Trapped. Unable to do the thing I want to do most.
T-47 Split Pea
See, dear reader. Marriage is about squeezing yourself into an everchanging box, in an attempt to fit into it.
T-47 Squash
Marriage will hollow you out…
T-47 Threepeater
…Tie you up in knots…
T-47 Tall-Nut
…and beat you senseless like Paul Dano in Prisoners…
T-47 Jalapeno
…Until there’s nothing left of the original you.
T-47 Sunflower
Marriage is tough. You feel like you pull yourself apart, all for this other person you consider to be the better half of you…
T-47 Twin Sunflower
…And then you wake up one day and realize they are a walking nightmare and that you didn’t need another half. It turns out you were pretty whole the entire time.
T-47 Starfruit
Just ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Wow, I needed that. I get a bit dramatic when I’m hungry. Oh shit, the list. Oh, Starfruit, such a forgettable plant in the game. I imagine my wife forgetting this guy was out in her garden and just stumbling upon his corpse one day.
T-47 Cabbage-Pult
Thanks for hanging on this far. Sorry to the PVZ fans for blowing up this list with my drama. I guess I really should be apologizing to my wife. I kind of just blew up our marriage, didn’t I? Oh, the Cabbage-Pult…I always wanted to superglue a bomb into his little launcher. I am sure these things are readily available in my wife’s garden.
T-47 Kernel-Pult
Hear me out on the Kernel-Pult. What if I superglued a bomb into his little launcher? Wait a minute, I just made that joke. Oh my god, my wife is right. I am a bad writer. I am a hack. Yet, she still agreed to sit down with me and do this list. She just sat here and played along while I made jokes at her expense. Fuck. I am a bad husband.
3. Gold Magnet
My wife would not kill Gold Magnet. In fact, I think she would keep him safe. Partially because he reminds her of the golden rule (which she practices religiously), also because it can pull any buzzsaws its way. But more than anything, she would keep it alive because it attracts coins, and we are broke as fuck.
2. Marigold
Marigold makes coins so therefore, safe. I should call her. If she wants to spend her time gardening I should support that, no matter how many plants die along the way. It’s ringing.
1. Cattail
It’s been a month since the last entry on this list. In that time my wife and I have reconciled and are happy to announce we are expecting another child. We are forgoing couples therapy because we really think this third baby is the answer to all our problems. Here is my wife to now complete the last entry of this list. “Oh my god, he is so cute. I would never let anything happen to him. That’s it, we’re getting a new cat. Combined with the new baby. that will fix all of our problems. I just know it.”
