Plants and worms and singing birds, oh my!

For people like me, who cannot tell when plants need to be watered until they are crawling to the faucet, help comes in the form of the moisture meter, which is a little stick you place in the ground or flower pot that tells you when you need to water and when you have drowned your plants.

Thanks to intense lobbying from the Supporters of Attractive Moisture Meters, moisture meters are not the boring appliances you might think. For instance, you can get a worm meter. Known affectionately as Wormie, it is a little terracotta worm that changes color to let you know whether or not you need to water the plants. If it is a light color, the plants need some attention, which may involve singing the words "Oh, do you know the plant parts, the plant parts, the plant parts," to the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?"

No, not really! If Wormie turns light, it means you should water the plants. When the plants are sufficiently watered, the worm will turn dark. If the worm explodes, immediately remove Wormie and all affected plants to a safe location, such as your neighbor's yard.

If worms are not really your thing, you may be a good candidate for the singing bird moisture meter, which indicates that plants need water by singing. Through some design flaw, the bird also sings when the plants have been overwatered, so if you are a Class 1 Plant Dummy as I am, you might be confused by whether the bird is singing because the plants are too dry or too wet. To be on the safe side, you might keep both the worm and the bird around, although you may notice that the more the bird whistles merrily, the paler the worm will get, regardless of how wet the soil is.

Moisture meters also come in many other picturesque forms, such as frogs, flowers, windmills, trains, planes, American flags, space shuttles, the president, macaroni and cheese boxes, etc. Because I have a tendency to water my plants too much, I personally need a moisture meter that senses me approaching from, oh, 75 feet, and immediately sends an alarm to summon the Garden Police, who, within minutes, would swarm the garden and confiscate all my watering equipment.

Hopefully they would leave Wormie.