But just when you're ready to toss yourself into the compost pile, your spirits soar in anticipation of a fun new season of gardening with your children.

Last year was my first experience gardening with my children. As a parent and a gardener, I knew that raising children and raising vegetables involved many of the same challenges, rewards, joys, and laundry expenses. But, I wondered, are parenting skills transferable to the garden? And what could I learn from gardening that would help me cultivate happy, thriving kids?

These are just some of the profound and intriguing questions that I did NOT ponder while gardening with my children last summer. I was too busy trying to keep them from walking on the spinach.

I doubt there's really that much overlap between parenting and gardening techniques anyway. A time out is unlikely to have much effect on an uncooperative tomato plant, for instance. And any attempt to pinch back an unruly child can lead only to a visit from social services.

Still, working in the garden with kids is lots of fun. You're outside. You're playing in the dirt. Sharp bladed tools are flying around. Pure quality time.

And it's educational! Gardening teaches kids important lessons about the "cycle of life." But parents, be ready to answer tough questions about why your child's pumpkin plant died.

Besides the metaphysical stuff, the kids learn practical horticultural skills that might stay with them their whole lives. Even after they've grown up and moved away, they may still use the gardening knowledge that you gave them to grow their own plants in a garden, window box, or dorm room closet. These valuable skills include fine motor control (handling tiny seeds), sorting (distinguishing good plants from weeds), adjusting water pressure ("JET" isn't the best setting for lettuce plants), and perhaps most importantly, pest control.

As every gardener knows, if you do not control pests, they can quickly destroy your entire crop. It's important to know which pests are present in your particular ecosystem and take appropriate, safe measures to protect your plants. Can you identify the most harmful pests that attack garden vegetables in your area? Slugs? Thrips? European earwigs? No. The primary pests that threaten your garden are, of course, the children themselves.

I'm kidding! Gardening with children is a joy. Still, bringing kids into the garden involves walking a fine line. Literally: between the tomatoes and the beets. And figuratively: the goal is to introduce the children to the fun of gardening without destroying the garden in the process. I know it's not easy to cultivate their spirit of exploration while constantly yelling "Don't walk there!" but try to inculcate a love for the tranquility of nature with a minimum of screaming. It's the standard parental high-wire act of teaching your kids to do some fun new activity - one false move and you've turned them off of gardening for life.

Many small children are just not yet equipped to care for fragile vegetable plants. These are people who take the name "squash" literally. The key is to focus on the aspects of gardening that come naturally to young kids, such as touching really dirty things and then immediately putting their fingers into their mouths. Or playing in the mud. Give a 3-year-old a shovel and turn him loose in a large area of dirt, and you're set for a whole day of fun.

But then comes the tedious part. Carefully plant the seeds, one in each little hole, in nice straight rows. Boring! My son has his own efficient cultivation method: Dig a large hole. Empty contents of seed packet into hole. Cover and keep digging elsewhere. Fun!

Finally, the seeds somehow get planted and the ground is all flat and smooth. Then you say to the child, "OK, you see this big patch of dirt, where we've been having a great time all day, digging and jumping and making mud pies? Well, you must now stop digging and never dig here again. You can't even walk in here anymore!" As your toddler's lip begins to quiver, you hasten to explain, "Because if we wait very patiently, our seeds will sprout and grow into big plants that, if we take good care of them, will eventually produce . . . vegetables!"

Wow, every child's favorite things: waiting patiently, not touching, and vegetables!

No wonder gardening is such a popular family activity! I'm telling a three-year-old boy, whose attention span is somewhat shorter than the growing season, that he must immediately cease doing something really fun in order to receive the delayed gratification of growing his own Brussel sprouts.

Yet amazingly, it works! Kids do like to watch the plants grow. They will eagerly pull up weeds, along with a few innocent bystanders like carrots and beets and radishes (helpful hint: when gardening with kids, plant a few extra seeds to compensate for the approximately 90% mortality rate of your plants). They will have fun watering the garden (and even more fun watering Daddy). They will help you harvest the crop (but forget about gathering just enough for each day's meal; once a child picks a pepper, it's awfully hard to stop until he's picked a peck, whatever that is, or at least until all the plants are completely denuded).

They might even start to like vegetables. The other night in a restaurant, my son Henry asked for broccoli on his pizza. The stunned waiter, after recovering from the shock of hearing a child order broccoli for the first time in his career, explained that it was unfortunately not available as a topping. Henry happily settled for red and green peppers.

Just like the ones he picked--all at once--in our garden last fall.

-- John Hershey is a dad, a writer, and a lawyer (in that order). To read more humor columns, please visit his website: www.thehumors.com.