My FAILgarden

It amazes me how many of my real-life friends mention that they read my blog. I am even more amazed when they say, "Oh Maria, you are so talented at sewing/cooking/whatever the heck you're writing about!" I'm glad to know I've got you all fooled, haha. :-D But blogging rarely tells the whole story, and for every domestic success, there is usually a spectacular domestic failure!

So in the spirit of keeping things real, I will share with you one domestic failure that not even some creative blogging can help: my garden.

I should have thought it through. I have a black thumb. The little strip of soil next to my apartment is of terrible quality. And that strip of land only gets about 3 hours of direct sunlight every day. But did all this stop me from attempting a small garden? Nooooooooo.

So, without further ado, let's walk through my little garden! Just to show you how bad it is, we'll start with my prize crop. It is my prize crop because it's the only plant that actually produced something edible:

That is supposed to be a cucumber plant. And yes, there is a cucumber hidden in there!

Looks like Vlasic is still going to be getting my business this year.

I have no idea what went wrong with my cukes. They initially did so well, and then just stopped thriving.If you could grow bottles of Coke, then this is analogous to planting a Coke seed, expecting nice two-liters, and only coming up with those dinky Coke ball things. Ah, c'est la vie.


Now, let's go on to the most impressive plant in my garden. This is one I didn't even plant. It just started sprouting outside the window one day, and I said, "Hey, that looks like a squash of some sort!" and let it grow wild and free. And boy, did it ever!

My parents are gardening geniuses and always have giant flower beds and abundant veggie crops every year, furthering the switched-at-birth possibility. They immediately identified it as a pumpkin plant during their recent visit to see Baby D. It must have been the accidental product of a perfectly-placed jack'o lantern last year,  but at least I got some beautiful flowers out of this one!

My parents told me, yup, the garden definitely failed because it doesn't get enough sun. So you can understand my puzzlement at my lavender plant, because somehow it got too much sun:

Now that is just sad.

Especially when other things are thriving just fine...

This is home to a scary, giant spider that has been living with us for a few weeks. It gives me horrible heebie-jeebies, but I can't bring myself to kill it. So I just walk VERY FAST to the door. Moving on!

What garden would be complete without herbs? Behold, the dill plant!

I estimate there to be juuuust enough to chop up and add to a fried egg. In case you didn't know, dill is heavenly in eggs, and that was the whole reason I grew it. Which is a good thing, because obviously, I will not be making any pickles with my cucumbers. 

And last, and maybe least, are my radishes. The night after I carefully planted the seeds in a perfectly even and symmetrical row, a surprise thunderstorm literally flooded up to my doorstep and wreaked havoc with my garden. Now, instead of a radish row, I have a radish "row":

And maybe it should be "radish" "row":

Say radish row too many times, and you start sounding like Scooby Doo.

Say, now here's something else I grew over the summer!

Now I feel much better about the rest of the garden.