Uncommitted garden post, w00ps

_posts/2017-06-16-dont-always-grow-right.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "They don't always grow right"
+tags:
+- garden
+- croyfamilyfarms
+---
+
+This year's growing season has been the most challenging to date, partially due
+to the increased square footage, but also due to events outside of my control.
+Thus far: deer have devoured the tops off some of my strawberries and bush
+beans. The native soil in the Sebastopol is so chock-full of grass and clover
+seed that the only way the beets have had a chance has been to tediously
+hand-weed the bed.  When transplants should have been soaking up sun to
+kick-start growth, the weather turned and stalled growth with sporadic days of
+rain. Once, it hailed in the west crop.
+
+It has been rough.
+
+Despite the frustrating sight of powdery mildew affecting some zucchini plants,
+I try to remind myself that our run of sugar snap peas (~15ft) produced 9.5lbs
+of crunchy sugar snaps. Despite the poor location I selected for the pumpkin
+(too much shade) I try to remind myself that I already harvested two seedings
+of radishes (~20ft). Despite disappointment at the plot of carrots becoming so
+overrun with grass and clover, such that it was more time-effective to hoe it
+all away and transplant some summer squash, I try to remind myself that there
+are 18ft of my first ever potatoes maturing in the ground.
+
+
+Most frustrating of all, my tomatoes. Many of their leaves curled, expressing
+their displeasure with my soil, my watering, or something else altogether. The
+first season I kept records, I harvested almost 100lbs of tomatoes from 6
+highly productive plants. This year, I have no idea what to expect, if
+anything.
+
+
+Despite **all** of that, I try to remind myself that: I have stood in the
+garden bemused as dozens of bees enjoyed the bounty of our pomegranate tree,
+heavy with flowers. I have quietly watered an adjacent bed, while robins poked
+around in the straw mulch, dining on all the creepy crawlies who inhabit those
+little ecosystems. I have walked outside every morning, greeted by warm sun,
+taller stems, and ever-broadening leaves.
+
+
+Cultivating seed and soil is a non-stop roller-coaster of "failures" and
+"successes." It is a humbling experience; it is not a dictation from man to the
+earth but rather a collaboration of countless artists that makes for "success."
+
+And while they don't always grow right, or how you expect them to, so long as
+they're growing, there's something in the process to savor and enjoy.
+
+
+(those deer however, can go straight to hell).