Even though it might have been a little late getting here this year, fall is still a real thing and the time has come to tear down the garden and hide all evidence of horticultural failure.
We had such optimism this spring, such ambition. We thought, this year we will grow all our own vegetables and we’ll positively glow with good health and vitamins. Poets say April is the cruelest month—but, in reality, April is the gullible month. We imagine all we have to do is drop a few seeds in the ground and up will sprout perfect vegetables, miraculously immune to insects, blight and whatever that is that makes tomatoes deflate and shrivel up like a week-old helium happy face balloon. Why weren’t my peppers symmetrical and pretty like the pictures on the seed package? Spring is for suckers.
Of course, real gardeners do get good results. And by “real gardeners” I mean those folks who actually weed their garden and water it when it gets dry and pick their string beans while they’re still tender, before they grow into tent stakes. These are the same people who rototill every spring, add compost and organic, range-fed, heirloom Columbian chicken manure and make neat, straight rows with twine and keep exact, carefully-labeled diagrams of every planting so they never get mixed up. I’m looking at my garden, wondering, “Is that arugula or is that where I ran out of seeds and this is really a stinging nettle?” Do I dare try some in a salad?
I figured you can’t go wrong with squash. It’s a true Jack-and-the-bean-stock vegetable. You stick the seed in the ground and stand back. It makes lush, conspicuous foliage and vigorous serpentine vines that slither across the lawn and leap over the neighbor’s fence and gives the impression you’ve got a green thumb. In my case, it was more like a science experiment gone wrong. The package said “Acorn Squash”. So, what in the world are those gnarly orange warts? They look like juvenile delinquent pumpkins. They look like dog toys from some twisted alternative universe. They look like bumpy barnacles scraped from the bottom of an old lobster boat. What they don’t look like is edible.
Fortunately, it’s now September and the garden is drying out, turning into a kind of pale green jerky. Soon, I will be able to pull up the chicken wire and mow the thing into powder. But I’m not sure the mower can safely handle the kale. I know I should have picked it earlier. It’s not like kale is ever pleasant to eat and it’s been getting tougher and scratchier since June. Still, I hate to waste it. Maybe I’ll use it to scour the rust from my shovel.
Mothers say that the process of childbirth is painful and frightening but after it’s all over, they begin looking forward to doing it again. And I know, as humiliating as this gardening season has been, this winter when the seed catalogs begin to arrive, I will feel sure that this spring will be my best garden ever.