IN THE COUNTRY, I've been told, gardening is a way of life, which is why I'm looking for an exit to the bypass. In the meantime, it has led me to a deeper appreciation of rain, winter and plastic.

When Elizabeth and I and the cats upped stakes in grimy old London and moved 70 miles or so into the lush English countryside nearly a year ago, I envisioned a life rich in roaring fires in the hearth, lambs bounding about the fields and skies where you could actually see stars.

What I did not bargain for was having to become a son of the soil, turning my share of the immediate outdoors into some sort of picturesque arboretum, in constant competition with neighbors forever trying to outplant and outflower one another.

The English, it must be said, are garden-happy - or, more appropriately, garden-mad. Even in the heart of a city such as London, they quest for ground-floor apartments, or "flats," where they have access to a postage stamp-sized plot of land to try to grow everything from marigolds to marijuana.

For those entrapped in upper-floor accommodation, many have access to "allotments," stretches of communal property where they can rent small plots for about a hundred bucks a year, to give vent to their horticultural instincts, not to mention getting away from the wife to sneak a few beers.

Periodically, they harvest the fruits of their labors - asparagus that looks like green toothpicks, potatoes complete with their own bugs, rhubarb that they wouldn't in a million years buy off a grocery shelf - and haul it down to the local pub to auction off to their pals.

(All of whom, of course, have brought along their own veggies and bloomers for the self-same purpose. The auctions are generally delayed until after five or six large scotches have been consumed, by which time the potatoes actually look edible and the cauliflower no longer resembles a brain that fell into the laundry bleach.)

For all the years of my city life, I resisted all of this on the reasonable grounds that it ate into drinking time at the pub and took up hours that otherwise could be devoted to reruns of "Frasier." Besides which, that's why they invented grocery stores and florist shops.

My anti-gardenist views are, in fact, deeply rooted in my childhood. During World War Deuce, I was dumped into an orphanage in Denver called Harmony Hall (my parents weren't dead, just otherwise occupied), where trips to the movies and Lakeside amusement park were earned by pulling weeds from the garden for about five cents an hour.

A few years later, at our (urban) home in Knoxville, Tennessee, I was allowed (read that "told, under grave duress"), as part of the family garden project, to tend three tomato plants and a few sprigs of asparagus.

The asparagus died a natural if very probably painful death, and I helped the tomatoes on their way to lycopersicon esculentum heaven by applying a couple of cupfuls of fertilizer per day for six days, which had an effect that can best be duplicated by using an acetylene torch.

Since that time, Mother Nature and I have maintained a respectful distance. At least we had, until our move to the country and my wife Elizabeth's determination that Ma N. and I should become reacquainted via the front and back gardens at our abode, Chard Cottage.

Now let it he said that Elizabeth is a deft hand at things gardenwise, despite her birth and breeding as a city lass in deepest London. She has an unerring nose for every garden center within a 40-mile radius, reads hoeing columns assiduously for news of the flower-of-the-month and goes berserk when a black spot pops up on the rose bush.

What goes on between the fuchsias and amid the honeysuckle and clematis is, as things go at Chard Cottage, strictly her business. I'll reconsider my status only when they start cleaning up that dirt stuff, genetically modify thorns from rose bushes and make earthworms prettier.

Don'' get me wrong. The gardens look lovely and charming, with all those reddish doo-hahs hanging off the whatsitses and the purplish blooms on the thingamabob bushes, or maybe they are shrubs.

After the initial ghastly business of scraping through mucky soil and planting all these things, the difficult part is the upkeep. Roses have to be pruned, which is why they attack you with things that pierce. The fuchsias have to be "dead-headed," whatever that might be. And, of course, it all has to be raked up.

I was watching our 7 1/2-month-old cat Angel Gabriel the other evening, and he came up with the obvious solution, or at least hinted at it. Angel was happily chewing away on a flower, which is more or less typically cat - except this flower was artificial.

Angel Gabriel, it transpires, cannot tell the difference between plastic flowers and the real thing. And to be sure, the artificial varieties these days really are convincing.

Moreover, they don't need pruning, or plumbing, or deadheading, or headhunting or whatever. They just sit there, looking pretty. For always, or at least until Angel Gabriel gets hold of them.

Anyway, I suggested this to Elizabeth, that we dig up all the plants and bushes and vines in the gardens and replace them with attractive, striking and above all durable plastic varieties. Legally, we can even have cannabis plants, as long as they are artificial.

Plus, for good measure I suggested plowing up all the grass, which persists in growing and has to be mowed every two weeks or so, and replacing it with Astroturf, or whatever they call the artificial stuff these days. No maintenance, and it looks just like the real thing, from an airplane a couple of miles up.

This is a family-oriented column, and my wife's indelicate response doesn't bear repeating here, at least not without wearing a suit of armor and a lawyer present.

So bring on the rain and winter's onslaught. Even Elizabeth will then have to sit quietly in front of the open fire, perchance to gaze wistfully at where the wisteria should be.

Thought for the Week: Do not go gently into that endless night, at least not without a heavy-duty flashlight.

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