When we first moved into this house there was a vegetable garden in the backyard with several varieties of tomatoes and sugar peas and cucumbers. Probably a few other veggies too but it’s been a long time and so I can’t remember. Besides the vegetable garden, the previous owner had an iris garden and a lavender patch. Her gardens were what sold me on the house. But you know, gardens take a lot of work. Unless, of course, you’re lucky enough to have a good gardener and not a mow and blow operation.
The next year I attempted to grow a vegetable garden with what little time I had between raising children, working and volunteering. And occasionally trying to write a story or paint a picture.
Alas, the green beans were inedible and various garden pests – rats, moles, snakes, squirrels, birds – took care of the other veggies. The moles were the worst because they eat the roots of the plants.
Well, it took a few years and the loss of hundreds of dollars (plants, dirt, fertilizer, etc.) until I gave up.
Saying nothing in particular 
Gardening brings the apocalypse to home. Imagining needing to grow food to survive instills a respect for the work involved. Extending the vision to include threats to young plants stiffens one’s resolve to defend one’s tender. Begone vermin, our need for sustenance exceeds your own.
I doubt I’d be able to survive the apocalypse on cherry tomatoes, green beans and jalapeno peppers. The vermin have no problem finding sustenance. They’ll probably welcome the apocalypse – their kind of party!
I tried for several years to grow tomatoes in our yard, but it’s hopeless. We don’t have enough sun, and I’m too lazy to care for them properly, so I felt like I spent $30 of water (and soil and so on) to get 1 cherry tomato. Now I support the farmers at the market. Please, no apocalypse! We’ll starve!
I’ve only have three pots: one for tomatoes, one for green beans and the third for jalapenos – definitely starting out small! If we were in a drought year, I wouldn’t even be trying. Container plants take a lot more water – especially these hot days!
Same here. We have too much sun, which isn’t good either. I plant flowers and bushes instead.
The problem where I live in the fog which wasn’t nearly as bad this year as it has been. (June and August are known as Gloom and Fogust!) September and October is where we typically get too much sun!
Love the ending. Unexpected. (I gave up long, long ago, before I even started). One can only bow with respect to those patient enough to work on a garden.
Have a nice week.
There are few people I admire more than the farmers of the world.
Very true. They toil and toil and give us food, and we don’t even look at them. My grandfather on my mother’s side came from a long, very long line of peasants, small farmers. Land is small in Brittany.
Now, in France? Many farmers are “dying.” practically starving on very low income. Too many regulations, taxes, norms… Terrible.
I’ve been to Normandy a few times and Mont St. Michel (which is kind of on the border) Always got marvelous hard cider and crepes but it seemed a little too coastal for farming. Most of California is perfect but we’re also a little too coastal. This year … so fair … weather perfect for veggies! Fingers crossed.
Normandy is nice. MOnt-Saint-Michel is right on the border. Bretons claim it (I did) Normands claim it. I now recognise it is in Normandy, after I read some history. The Normands built it. No doubt.
Best wishes for your veggies.
Hi Jan, my mother can make anything grow and I kill everything. That is how it is.
Aww, will you ever try again?
Our tomatoes are just starting to ripen. That’s all my N. grows.
He’s become a tomato grow nut, and I am a tomato slave.
From mid July to mid September, I stew and sauce and freeze and dehydrate tomatoes.
Every dinner has tomatoes in it.
It’s still my fave food!
Tomatoes are great to grow because there are so many things you can do with them!
Yes!
Tomatoes are my fave food.
Yet lime is my fave flavour.
Have a fab Sunday, Jan!