Now Here's Bounty!

NOT!!!

Oh, it may look like a garden with its broad green leaves spreading out in all directions, but as far as a vegetable-producing garden, it’s woefully underproduced.  And the pun is intended.

One thing I was looking forward to in retirement is bragging about our garden.  That’s typical among seniors right?  We have the time, patience and knowledge to do it right.

I thought this was going to be my year.  I had time to water.  There would be no long vacations where my garden would feel abandoned.  I constructed an elevated planter box and loaded it up with premium soil.  I even fertilized occasionally.  So almost eight weeks later and what have I gotten?  A six-inch zucchini and two crookneck yellow squash that I had to convince my wife were edible despite their mutated appearance.  

The green peppers that started to grow called it quits and dropped off the vine.  Our radishes and onions have done even less.  They haven’t even started to grow.

And there does not appear to be anything happening in our elevated box garden to infuse us with any hope for the rest of this year.  There were blooms galore in our squash plants with bees apparently pollinating everything in sight.  At times it must have been a bee orgy behind all that green.  But then just the two squash and not even a ‘baby bump’ in the remaining plants.  Somebody was practicing safe pollination apparently.

I’m not ready to call it a total wash.  I have two plants that are producing numerous edible vegetables.  Except that one is producing jalapeño peppers while the other is producing even more potent bright red thai peppers.

If you’re not familiar with thai peppers, there’s a scene in the movie Dumb and Dumber where the protagonists stuff a fellow traveler’s burger with thai peppers while he is occupied elsewhere.  When the traveler returns and bites into the burger, peppers and all, it sets in place a tragic set of circumstances that results in the man’s death.  

So then, is my garden messing with me?  Is it saying, “C’mon Dave.  Lots of jalapeno and thai peppers to munch on” while inwardly the vegetables are all snickering to themselves. 

I feel like that character in Little Shop of Horrors who, after failing to get his plant to thrive, laments, “I’ve tried you at levels of moisture from desert to mud; I’ve given you grow lights and mineral supplements; what do you want from me, blood?”

Well, maybe, but I am going to have to draw a line somewhere.