Are you a city dweller living in a high-rise apartment block? Do you miss having trees as neighbors? Have the few plants you tried to grow on the veranda died of asthma? I offer all you smog dwellers my garden: a virtual garden where you too can grow tomatoes and even pick off the worms. Or just be glad you only have to read about it.

This year, the gardening hazard is worms; they are everywhere, eating the leaves and blossoms of flowers, boring into infant tomatoes. Every day I put on my gardening gloves, which I received as a thank you gift for attending my neighbor's funeral, and pick off worms. With these funeral gloves, the worms will meet their death.

There is no fussing about capital punishment in my garden, and the worms meet their end with the assistance of special worm-squashing shoes. What makes them special is they have no treads to offer crevices for escape. Pick and squash, pick and squash. Buddhists believe in reincarnation and that you may come back to this world as a tree, animal or even a worm. I hope I'm not killing off entire clans of ancestors.