You're not doing it wrong
it's just that hard
What do you do when things feel messy?
Our garden this year is messy. It’s full of weeds. I planted the zucchini too closely and it infected the squash with powdery mildew. The cucumbers have been struggling all summer. Most of the carrots never germinated despite my replanting them. I’ve sort of given up.
And yet… once or twice a week I go out there and there’s still all of this:
So, if there is obviously fruit coming out of the garden - though perhaps not as much as there could be, given different time and circumstances - why does it feel like failure?
I wonder if my feelings of failure center around the fact that it doesn’t look the way I think it should. I envision some version of “Better Homes and Gardens” mixed with “Ballerina Farm” and am disappointed when this is the reality:
I shuffle out to the garden when I have time (or after purposely delaying grocery shopping so I’ll run out of produce and be forced to go see what’s there). I gather carrots and a few zucchini, then a few o…