I can just picture my husband dressed all in khaki, hacking his way through dense undergrowth (and overgrowth), battling anacondas, and adorned with a pith helmet. (Whatever that is. I can only assume it’s a hat full of pith.)

That’s my vision of Dan as an eco-warrior. None of this chaining himself to construction equipment, living in a treetop for weeks on end, or throwing himself between a harpoon and a whale.

He’s a kinder, gentler eco-warrior. He carries a trowel rather than a machete and a watering can instead of a canteen. Dan never met a plant he didn’t like. (Except for thistles. He had an epic battle with thistles one year, and I’m still not sure it’s completely over. The thistle is the creeping definition of an invasive species. But I digress.)

In fact, Dan never met a weed he didn’t like. In yet another fact, he’s never met a weed at all (unless you count the aforementioned thistles). To him, as he often says, sometimes at dinner parties, a weed is just a plant that grows where you don’t want it to.

Unfortunately, the city disagrees. To them, a weed is a plant ten inches tall or greater. (Thistles are generally taller than ten inches.) They’re not quite as bad as a Home Owners’ Association, but they get pretty snippy if you don’t snip plants off where they think you should. I try not to get involved in the epic battles this clash of cultures leads to. (I don’t always succeed.)

Anyway, Dan has changed his strategy. Instead of planting flowers or shrubs that get mistaken for weeds, he’s planting trees this year, which are supposed to get over 10 inches tall. (He’ll never see the fully grown trees, of course, but he wants to leave a little forest in the sloping space that would be impossible to mow anyway because it’s so steep. Not that he’d want to. But I digress again.)

He’s also given to making a small jungle inside the house. He regularly brings home plants from Meijer when they’re about to expire (or be dead, reduced in price, or thrown away). He has night-blooming jasmine, shamrocks, and some long-legged things that I fear are going to strangle me in my sleep someday. He brings me orchids for my desk, for no reason. He’s also very fond of hanging baskets of begonias and ferns.

Every year, he makes a wish list of plants that he wants for spring or fall. (I get to research them on the internet and find the money to pay for them. Then he (reluctantly) prunes his wish list down closer to the figure that I came up with. He always forgets to add the shipping costs, which are pretty high for live plants. I also get to check with the companies to see which plants are out of stock and which are available only as seeds rather than live plants. Dan wants me to be involved in his gardening, and I’d have to say I am, even if I don’t dig in the dirt. But I digress at length.)

These internet-and-catalogue expeditions occur regularly twice a year, in spring and fall. And spring is often defined as January, so that the plants he wants won’t be out of stock. Then comes the waiting and the pleas to check my email to see if the greenery has shipped yet. (All the correspondence comes to me since I am the one who does the actual ordering. My plant catalogue email list is as prolific as a spider plant. But I digress some more.)

Back when he lived in Pennsylvania, Dan had a small greenhouse attached to his parents’ house. I don’t think he has ever gotten over it and wants to replicate it here, which we can’t afford. (He had a “dwarf” banana tree in the greenhouse. When it touched the roof and started to bend over, he dug a hole in the dirt floor and sank the pot down into it, so the tree would have extra room to grow. He seems to have a visceral objection to pruning. But I digress yet again.)

This year for Christmas, I think I’m going to buy him that pith helmet, if I can figure out his size and find an online supplier. Maybe one for me, too, just so I can be involved in the eco-wars.