Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Unlike my daughter, who despite dealing with similar weather patterns, and is living in an apartment in the city, with nothing but a deck to utilize for such pursuits, my garden is not faring so well this year. I find myself viewing my daughters garden photos with longing, reading her descriptions with disbelief, as my eyes wander over the much larger garden space my country home affords me.

My daughter has been kind enough to share photos of her 2 tomato plants, their lush greenery yielding a full 14 healthy looking tomatoes waiting to ripen, and, she says, those are just the ones she can see at the moment. She mentions her green peppers, also bearing fruit, and her herbs, all flourishing on the deck of her city apartment.

I wander outside, and gaze at the two large areas my family and I have toiled to shape, spent time and dollars to protect with fencing, carefully strung flashing tape to dissuade the Blue Jays, tilled by hand, amended with our own compost, and endured hours straining our backs, seeding, weeding, watering by hand. For all our trouble we have 9 spindly tomato plants, adorned with a few flowers on each. We have 3 small bell pepper plants, with nary a flower. For all the hundreds of spinach seeds we sowed, we realized perhaps 6 small plants, all together yielding perhaps enough leaves for a scant garnish on our 4 dinner plates. Our romaine, while looking reasonably healthy, along with our zucchini and acorn squash sport the clothing of early June, rather than late July.

Our peas seem happy enough, although they're certainly taking their time, nearly a month behind schedule, and a good portion of our carrots and green onions have been growing steadily, providing the smaller of my two gardens with some greenery. Two of my 6 Broccoli plants were showing some limited promise,until they went to seed, but most of my potatoes are looking great.

While at the fair on Wednesday we met, and discussed our mutual gardening woes with a Master Gardener. I was only somewhat gratified to hear her voice the same thought that has been on my mind. We can only hope for an extended late Summer season. In the meantime, the Earth Box, which my daughter relies on for gardening on her deck outside her apartment in the city is a recurring picture milling about in my mind.

There's something seriously wrong with this picture!