Garden Post Mortem

Sad, but true.  My gardening acumen is nada.  I have the Black Thumb.  Yes, for a short while I had things moving along, some basil, squash, peas, arugula, green beans and the much hoped for tomatoes.  Alas, the arugula was the most successful, which is fine, I love the stuff.  The basil was good for a while but then got woody and tough.  Peas gave some goodness but then acquired a furry mold.  Green beans, maybe total there were 30.  Squash total: zero. Who else out there cannot grow zucchini, come on, raise your hands.  See, no hands showing.  So sad.

Tomato plants are still out there, in their ten gallon buckets, the plants themselves looking like survivors of a concentration camp.   We got maybe a dozen good tomatoes, another dozen small but fine, and there are still at least a dozen on the plants, some reddish, many green.  However, now they are being guarded by a gigantic spider, one with fangs and a small metal helmet, holding a tiny spear with a poison arrow on the end.  The spider is about the size of my dog's face.  Just seeing it made my hair do that shivery thing, where it feels like there are crawly things in your hair and it itches, but you know it's just the creep factor of the huge and dangerous spider defying you to try and touch one of your tomatoes.  There are small things, about the size of hummingbirds, spun in tight webs that the spider is clearly saving for a later feast.  It is so unsettling I can't even go near the plants for fear of it jumping at me with its fangs and spear ready to puncture my face.  

So, that's about it.  I know I have said this before, but even the mint I tried to grow is languishing and everyone told me "No, don't plant mint, it will take over the garden!!!!"  Rest assured, it hasn't.  There are some nasturtium plants growing a little bit, which I count as a triumph.

Ah, well, so it goes. Many people told me that all you need is good soil (check) and sunlight (check) and water (check.) Maybe I used too much water or too little, I don't know.  All I know is that if we live here next year I am not going to waste the water trying to grow anything.  I am going to bake dozens and dozens of shortbread cookies and offer to trade them for produce.  I have friends with gardens who can't (or won't) bake their way out of a frozen Sara Lee Cheesecake Box and perhaps if I tempt them with shortbread they will be willing to part with tomatoes and squash and beans and peas and basil and more tomatoes.  I will even throw in a carrot cake (now I can see the gleam in your eyes!)  But I don't think I will attempt to conquer the Curse of the Black Thumb again.

But I have to say that those 30 beans and that arugula and those few tomatoes that I did get before the radioactive Spider Henchman came along were really, really good.

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