If there were an Olympic event for gardening, I wouldn't bring home the gold from Beijing. Lead, perhaps, but not gold.

Through little fault of my own, I have sent another potential bumper crop of fruits and vegetables straight to the fiery afterlife.

I had help, you understand, from the "drought" (or what Washington tries to tell us is a drought; personally, I believe the truth is out there).

Moreover, the recession (which Washington tells us is "not a recession") aided and abetted me, although I have never studied economics and don't really know what I'm talking about.

My backyard could have survived the "drought" if only I had been allowed to water it, say, 24 hours a day all summer long. With a nimiety of rules, though, it didn't have a chance.

I don't want to get carried away here, but isn't that what the Declaration of Independence was all about: tossing off the regulations of the crown? Those Colonial gardeners wrote the check for us when they stood up for life, liberty and the pursuit of irrigation, but we can't cash that check because of watering restrictions. Where are you when I need you, Thomas Jefferson?

Centuries after independence, I was thwarted from supplying my yard with water, and so my vegetation dried up faster than Brett Favre's membership in the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce.

I can live without my lawn; mowing is a chore, anyway, perpetuated by fanatics. Our strip of vegetables, however, would have provided our sustenance in a summer when the conspiracy hijacked the tomato supply, kicked up the prices of rice and milk, and made it too expensive to drive to the store anyway.

We set out a few tomato plants in our plot, and, like the Georgia Bulldogs, they showed promise. Before long, they withered on the vine in the heat, gasping like that crazy old coot from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Our bell peppers developed splotches. The cucumbers took on an unhealthy yellow glow. The onions never grew much bigger than when I set them out.

Our vines did produce a few yellow-meated watermelons, but they were so stunted that they resembled those "personal size" melons the supermarkets foisted off on us.

Our cantaloupes made it to maturity, too, but the bugs found that they could avoid the "drought" by taking up residence inside.

The heat addled our 8-year-old plum tree, which finally decided to bear fruit. What poor timing! A dozen plums later, that tree, too, asked "Why bother?" and went back to its barren ways.

The lone bright spot in our garden was the herbs, but you can't make a meal out of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

Somewhere along the way from 1776, we forgot that we were endowed with certain unalienable rights: free air at the gas station, free water for the azaleas and free signals for our television sets. We've lost them all, and I don't like it.

I want to water my garden. I want to burn my growing pile of leaves, branches and dried-up vegetables. I want to be allowed to shoot my lawn mower when it fails to start. I'm an American, and I'm about ready to dump a glass of tea into the harbor.

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.