Evaluation

It pains me to admit this, but I have very nearly forsaken the garden, already. I blame it on the rain. We've had a lot of rain lately, and far more than usual rain all summer. Every time I plan to get in the garden after work, it rains before I get home. The low end of the original garden is so wet that it'll suck your shoes right off your feet if you try to walk the bean rows. I last set foot among the beans over a week ago, and had to fight my way between the tangled vines and battle squadrons of hungry mosquitoes to gather a bucket full of beans. Nanny felt up to doing the snapping and shelling. I came home the next day and canned what may have been my last canner-load of jars this season.

The tomato crop is officially shot. The once-lush plants are now bare, tangled sticks. What little fruit remains on the vines is sickly and unappetizing. When I braved the grass and the chiggers last week to gather some peppers, I noticed that some of the tomatoes are blooming again. It may be that we'll have a few more to eat before the season is over but right now even the green tomatoes are cracked and bursting.

Overall, this gardening season has been a huge disappointment. The 100+ tomato plants, though diligently tended, produced about as much usable fruit as last year's 50 plants. The yellow squash drowned right off the bat, and though I planted more seeds, they didn't come up. We've harvested ONE zucchini from our four zucchini plants. (With four plants, we should've been leaving zucchini on the neighbors' doorsteps by now.) Only the okra and - God bless 'em - the eggplants have performed as expected...but who likes eggplants, anyway?

I am tired of the garden. Tired of picking. Tired of canning. Tired of the boxes of jars and lids and canning equipment crowding my dining room table. Tired of finding stray tomato seeds stuck to every surface in my kitchen. Just plain tired. Last week, when Pop-Pop mentioned that he knew someone who would pick the beans for half of the take, I jumped at the offer. Let's see how well they deal with the blood-sucking mosquitoes and the shoe-sucking mud.

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