Kids’ TV star Bill Nye may be an expert in science, but his record on marital chemistry isn’t so hot these days. First, his union with journalist and musician Blair Tindall ended after seven weeks last year, when their marriage license was deemed invalid. Now, TMZ.com reports that Nye requested a restraining order against Tindall, alleging that she tried to destroy his flower and produce gardens — and possibly to poison him as well.

The host of the popular ’90s educational show Bill Nye the Science Guy filed the request with a Los Angeles County judge on September 4, to prevent Tindall from contacting him or approaching his Studio City home.

According to Nye, 51, he caught Tindall in his backyard at around 11:30 p.m. on Labor Day, dressed in black and holding two large plastic bottles. His handwritten court documents say that the bottles were “filled with some sort of solvent”, which was “quite toxic”. He later told People, “Apparently, she was trying to poison my plants, including some vegetable[s]… She fled on foot, and then a car sped away from the scene.” Nye also claims that he feared she might have squirted the herbicide in his eyes if she’d gotten closer.

On top of that, Nye now says that Tindall has driven past his home at least twice in the last few weeks and even left a coffee pot on his porch.

Tindall, 47, filed a response to the restraining order on November 13, in which she admitted that the garden incident was a “foolish, sophomoric act of poor judgment”; provoked by personal issues. However, she accused Nye of “emotional cruelty” and vehemently denied being any kind of threat to him.

Nye and Tindall were engaged for five months before they held their wedding ceremony on February 3, 2006. Tindall played oboe professionally in New York for more than twenty years before turning to journalism, later writing for the New York Times and the International Herald-Tribune. She is the author of a memoir of the classical-music world, Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music, published in 2005.

As Tindall may have learned, engaging in revengeful acts against your ex is never the way to go: it only makes the situation worse and exacerbates the pain. For an L.A. attorney’s view on turning your divorce into a war, click here.