My garden is kind of a mess this year, even more so than in prior years. The raised garden boxes we built a while ago to save my old back are wonderful to help avoid the kneeling and bending, but have also reduced the garden area to a more defined space. The earlier garden sprawled across the back of the yard at ground level, aallowing for lots of unkempt growth and necessitating lots of weeding. The four 4’ x 8’ raised beds are easier to work and tend.

However, I am apparently not particularly disciplined when it comes to gardening (if not in other ways). This year’s plans were, as always, shaped by my idealized anticipation of how the plants would grow and how well I tended them. Unfortunately, my schemes were impacted by the selection of plants at the nursery and my own imagination. Sure, I started off with a discrete list of items to get, but I was ultimately also drawn into fantasies about various new-to-me varieties of squash, cucumbers and others.

We had a very wet early summer this year and the neat rows that existed in my mind soon became a jumbled mass of plants. I recently picked a yellow zucchini of some size out of the top of a trellised tomato. The green beans sprouted well, but then disappeared, probably due to some very hungry caterpillar. The peas did okay early in the season, but stopped producing back in June. I tried to plant a few pumpkins in that box and I was quite successful. The bean trellis is working (so far) for the pumpkin vines, but I’m not sure how well the pumpkins will do hanging several feet above the bed. (I’ve read of hanging stockings as hammocks for the suspended pumpkins. Perhaps I will try that.)

Apparently, I was not disciplined as I might have been in plant selection, and only after they grew did I realize how big some of the plants would get. The lemon cucumbers didn’t grow on a trellis like the regular cukes, but sprawled across the beets and chard — smothering them somewhat. The regular cukes decided they didn’t like the trellised garden boxes, but preferred to hang down outside the box and tangle with the weedy vegetation there then sprawl across the ground. The two rows of carrots in different beds seem to have vanished under the pressure of the errant squash, cuke or pumpkin vines.

On the other hand, the tomatoes are doing very well. I have to say, fresh tomatoes remind me of my father, who loved them with salt and pepper. I have been enjoying them with sliced cukes and onions drizzled with an olive oil and vinegar dressing, topped with some feta crumbles. Fresh tomatoes make all the gardening efforts worthwhile.

I have hopes that the chard, beets and carrots will recover as the summer wears on and as the other plants begin to fade off with the cooler weather. Of course, I realize that optimism is the sign and bane of all gardeners. Planting seeds is the greatest form of hope for the future. We face all the obstacles, real and imagined, known or unknown, with determination that this year we will prevail. And luckily, it only takes a few small successes for us to think we have succeeded.

Hmmmm, I think I’ll have another fresh tomato.