Square-Futile Gardening

I haven't talked about our garden much lately. Mostly because I'm embarrassed. I just managed to kill a zucchini plant. You know how hard it is to do that?

Meanwhile, I've been hacking away at the weeds in the fourth garden box in order to plant some cucumber plant seedlings that David has nurtured on our back deck. Nurtured, just to hand them over to me so that I can kill them, too.

I know, it's a special talent of mine.

I read Square-Foot Gardening years ago; and I persist in the delusion that this method will work for me. All around me are plots which are now sporting rows of lush vegetation of the non-weed variety. Thick bushy tomato plants staked to poles, crowded beds of lettuce, stands of basil - it looks like the Garden of Eden before the Fall. In the midst of it all is my anal-looking Square-Foot demo garden, with 6 4-foot by 4-foot regulation garden boxes, 2 of which are filled with weeds that are growing with a frightening velocity toward the sky (think Jack and the Beanstalk). The 4 cultivated (barely) boxes look pathetic, with their dying basil, the already dead zucchini plant, and a bunch of tomato seedlings which, while not dying, are not exactly thriving either. It all looks like a botanical practical joke. In fact, I feel like the class clown of the community gardens.

And, yet, I can't give up. I have young children who do not realize that the visions of copious amounts of produce that dance through their heads will never be realized. Who do not understand that, merely by suggesting we grow things in the garden this year, their mother has essentially lied to them. Because she knew that success would be a chimera, a tantalizing pot of gold at the end of a blood, sweat, and tears rainbow. These trusting innocents still believe, gosh darn it, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we will end up with market baskets full of edibles; and who am I to destroy their dream? No, as long as they believe, I must continue this charade of horticultural competence. I'm just praying for an act of God (earthquake, twister, whatever) to come along and destroy our work before the kids realize it was all for nought anyway.

But, I swear, if I read one more blog with people showing off photos of their gardening successes (Barb), I may have to quit the blogosphere until the first frost. Talk about salt in my wounds...