Sunday, September 28, 2014

So It Turns Out I Have a Black Thumb

Remember last year when I wrote a couple of enthusiastic blog posts about the vegetable garden I planted? And do you also remember how I just sort of never mentioned it again? Yeah, there was a reason for that. It turns out that either I can’t grow vegetables or I live on accursed soil. I would say that this is a Sign from the Universe that I’m not supposed to be here, if I were the sort of half-educated hippie who believes that the Universe is a sentient being both capable of and willing to communicate with me personally. I mean, honestly, if the Universe were going to tell me things, I think It would send me a postcard or something.



So all the things I planted last year promptly died or were eaten by rabbits. Well, that’s not entirely true, I got like five peas and two tomatoes. These tomatoes were the size of golf balls. It’s no wonder all those Jamestown settlers died.

When I lived with the ex, Toad Blowhard, we had a bunch of houseplants and I was really good at taking care of them and they thrived. I thought I had a bit of a green thumb. So I was shocked and appalled when all of my plants died. I guess maybe it was really Toad who had the green thumb and I was just the one who watered the plants and kept the cat out of them.

NO SMALL FEAT, I might add.

No, I don’t know what happened. One day all the stuff looked great, the next it was all shriveled up and brown and dead and shit. I didn’t take any pictures, because I don’t want to remember.

If I have one quality that I’m entirely too proud of in spite of the fact that it’s driving me right to my doom, it’s my inability to accept failure. I mean, my tenacity. So, this year, I bought a gas-powered tiller and planted vegetables again.

I managed to get about half a dozen small tomatoes before my tomato plants inexplicably shriveled up and died in a near-repeat of last year’s performance. I say near-repeat because the plants actually grew to a more-or-less normal size before they died for no reason, so that was encouraging. I would have gotten up to three normal-sized tomatoes off of them, but I forgot a dose of deer repellant so the deer ate them instead. I also managed to grow two whole servings of green beans and several small, misshapen and immature bell peppers that were supposed to be purple but had to be harvested while still green, on account of their weight caused the plants to fall over. Rabbits got the lettuce and cantaloupes. The carrots never sprouted. The cucumbers put up a hell of a fight, but ultimately produced nothing.

I also grew a sunflower:



But two days after I took that picture, the sunflower fell over and died.


Will I plant a vegetable garden again next year? You bet your ass I will.