I Blame the WIMP

If you need someone to blame for not getting something done in or out of the garden, you might look at your smartphone to find that someone.

Inside your phone, you’ll find the “Woman in the Phone” aka the WIMP, or Wimp.

Wimp is an appropriate name for her because I think she’s a bit of a softie.

The other day, I woke up early, and through closed blinds, I could not tell if it was rainy, cloudy, or just still early.

“Hey, Siri (that’s what Wimp prefers to be called when you ask her something), what’s the weather today.”

Wimp replied, “Rain.”

Okay, then! Rain means I can’t do anything in the garden, I need to make alternate plans.

Then Wimp wanted me to grab the phone and start scrolling through emails before getting out of bed. “No,” I said. Instead, I got up and put on regular clothes, then proceeded to open the blinds only to realize that it was not, in fact, raining. Just cloudy. No rain!

That wimp, Wimp, really didn’t want to go out into the garden to do any work.

Such a wimp is Wimp.

So I scolded Wimp for providing wrong information, changed into gardening clothes, and spent nearly three hours in the garden weeding, deadheading, and tying up tomatoes. Then I cleaned up and went about my day.

How else does Wimp keep me from doing anything?

If I sit for a minute and think maybe I should get up and go outside to pick green beans, Wimp will give me other ideas. You see, wimp is lazy. Instead of telling me, “Yes, go pick green beans,” she encourages me to scroll through Instagram, again, even though I had just scrolled through it.

“Someone might have posted something funny,” Wimp says.

Wimp is such a temptress.

Or if I really should get up and fold the laundry, Wimp instead invites me to open up the YouTube app, just for a quick peek at a video. “Really, 20 minutes isn’t too long of a break for a video,” Wimp says.

And Wimp wants to look at email again instead of mowing. Of all things!

Now, briefly, in her defense, Wimp means well and does do some good. If I ask her to set an alarm for a specific time, she does it willingly. If I ask her to make a note of something, she’s right there doing it. Oh sure, sometimes she doesn’t get the note quite right… maybe misunderstanding a request to add a note titled “Write a blog post about lazy cucumbers” and making it a note titled “Write a blog post about crazy cucumbers.” But she means well.

In fact, she will tell me a new joke anytime I ask. One of her best ones was:

Have you ever seen an elephant hiding in a tree?

They hide really well.

Pause for laughter.

Yet despite her flaws and lazy ways, Wimp can be useful to a gardener, willingly helping take picture after picture of plants and gardens.

She can even identify some plants from pictures. Wimp correctly identified the picture above as that of a rose. (Good job, Wimp!)

But my goodness, Wimp can be lazy. Don’t let Wimp’s laziness become your laziness! Teach her to be quiet so you can get your work done in the garden or inside, as the case may be.

I’d suggest you even leave her inside while you are gardening, but then who will take all the pretty pictures?