More Garden Mishaps

I had to leave town for a couple of days, and when I got home, I was greeted by an overgrown nightmare. Okay, maybe “nightmare” is too strong, but the green carpet across the whole area made it incredibly difficult to find the things I actually planted.

Over the past three days, I’ve spent eight or nine hours trying to catch up. I’m finally starting to see a modicum of progress, but overall, it’s been pretty discouraging.

I lost a whole row of herbs because they were planted too close to a quince bush that I cannot get rid of no matter how hard I try. I lost several more herbs for unknown reasons, too. One of them grew perfectly fine last year, but not this year.

I also found an insect that immediately triggered the “OMG what the heck is that???” response.

The bunching onions and chives never sprouted, either.

After about 90 minutes of work, I finally started to feel like I could at least see the garden again.

Two hours later, I was still pulling weeds and trying to identify what was actually growing versus what had invited itself into the beds.

At around the five-hour mark, things finally started looking a little more manageable, and I could focus less on panic-weeding and more on checking on the vegetables that were actually doing well.

Okay, now for the better news: my tomato plants are doing well. I have a lot of carrots, lettuce, arugula, and an absurd amount of dill and cilantro.

After all of that work, I finally harvested my very first thing of the season: one single radish. 😀

I know that in a week or two I’ll probably feel much better about all of this, but right now I mostly feel discouraged and overwhelmed. I guess the “silver lining” is that I also just lost my job, so now I get to spend a lot more time out there…