My cucumbers, beets, carrots, melons and beans are fighting a battle that they simply cannot win. The match they have met?

Acorn squash.

I swear, during an especially rainy time I went from having a nice little path one day to having el-zilcho the next. I'm half afraid that I'll wake in the morning to tiny green tendrils around my face and hear "Feed me, Seymour."

And yet, I still have virtually no produce.

Ah, but that sounds defeatist. The truth is, I look at this year as kinda being the first pancake that gets thrown away; the next one will be better.

I was intimidated at first. I knew absolutely nothing about gardening, and overloading myself with information did nothing to help. There is no pleasing me. So, I decided to keep things simple; instead of fretting over the fact that I would not be able to ever do this "perfectly" (trying to reconcile companion planting, a multi-season harvest, what we would actually eat, what is suited to our climate, what seeds I found, what kind of ph balance my soil would need to be, what needed sun, what needed properly drained soil, what's going to climb, what's not--phew) I just dove in. Tim took his tiller (hello, alliteration!) and cleared a nice little spot for me. I worked in some sort of fertilizer, watered it, waited a week. Planted stuff. And true to my crazy backwards double-think brain, while I worried about doing this right, I somehow also convinced myself that I knew better than the instructions on the back of my seed packets ("Two feet apart? Oh, come on. That's gonna look stupid.") Well, I'm paying the price now. Feed me, indeed.

Next year will be SO different. More planning. Left-brain style, yo. I will start choosing things in February. I will nurture the tender seedlings in March. I will break soil in April. I will...go to bed now.

Good night, friends!