After I walked in the door from vacation and dropped my seventeen bags in the entry, I glanced into the backyard and saw the garden. I mean, The Garden.
It had grown.
The pumpkins have kicked the sugar snap peas out of the trellis. "Squatters," the pumpkins tell me, of the pea plants. I think they're The Garden bullies. The orange and white varieties are teaming up, though, so they're just mean, not racist.
One of the zucchini twins is producing edibles, the other is holding off. They seem cooperative like that, taking turns and whatnot. They don't have great camaraderie with their neighbors since they plotted with the pumpkins to terminate the sunflowers. The tomatoes are getting nervous.
The tomatoes decided to become the brown-nosers and generate as much fruit as possible (for protection's sake), since they heard me talking about how I "just want some tomatoes" one afternoon in the spring. Class favorites, they're tall (bigger than a 3 year old), dark (so much foliage), and handsome (loads of flowers and mini tomatoes).
I really need to get in there and lay the smack down on those pumpkins and zucchinis (most people would call it "pruning"), but frankly, I'm a little frightened. The pumpkins have wrapped their little climbing spirals around everything and have spread out of the bed and into the murky, weedy territory by the garage. The zucchini leaves are HUGE and a bit prickly and there are so many BUGS. I mean, what IS this?
Why can't I have a magically tidy garden like this one?
On the plus side, I harvested a couple more zucchini and they do look delightful.
So, lose, win, win?
How does your garden grow? Did you try and fail? Have epic success with cantalopes? Mediocre herbs? Are you a flower or vegetable gardener or do you do both?
