My Pathetic Garden

My poor garden. This season, I've dealt with bugs, a hurricane, and feline predators. . . And at present, I have about a half dozen large tomatoe plants, two cherry tomatoe plants remain, a half dozen pea plants, and two pumpkin plants. From these, I have so far yielded zero edible items, and will be yielding a grand total of zero edible items this season. All of these were started too late in the season (the pumpkins, especially so, and were really only planted because I felt bad to throw away all the seeds). To add to that, it took me forever to get them outside, mostly because I didn't know how to handle the fact that on the first day that I set them outside, I lost several plants - ENTIRE PLANTS - to bugs. Looking back, and knowing now how long it takes a plant to grow and yield a vegetable, I probably should not have even bothered with this garden this year. Well, lessons learned. I now realize the following:

1. The seeds for next year's garden should be started, like, maybe next month, if they are to be ready to yield anything edible.

2. They need to be transplanted outside at the earliest possible moment.

3. The moment they are transplanted, they need to be doused with chemicals, and then be sprayed again every couple of days for the entirety of their lives.

4. I really need a functional hose or a larger watering can because going in and out eleventy billion times with the tiny watering can blows.

5. Gardening can be a huge, depressing, disappointing waste of time, and I need to not become emotionally attached to my little plant babies, or overly hopeful that it could actually work.

That said, my garden did come a long way in the past month. Here it is one month ago:



And here it is today:



If only it could have grown that fast to begin with, and not spent THREE MONTHS growing from a seed to where it's at in the first picture! Ridiculous! How does anyone grow anything in this state where we're lucky if we get three warm months a year?!?

*sigh*

Better luck next year, I hope!