Garden woes: you'd think those plants were kids!

I fret over my garden. Oh, how are they doing? Will they grow? Are they okay? When it rains or hails, I can't wait to run out and see what happened.

"Oh hello everybody, how are you doing today? Is it sunny enough? Do you have enough water? That's it, reach, stretch, stand up tall!"

Oh boy. 

So last year we had our share of garden problems including:

• The cat used one cucumber mound for a littler box. Sigh. 
• The cucumber bugs ate every baby cucumber that popped out. 
• What the bugs didn't get, the bunnies got.    
• The bunnies also got the tomatoes and so did the birds. I'd find half-eaten ones strewn around and once caught a bunny flat-out with one in his mouth!
• The deer tromped into the garden - with tracks evident right up to the okra plants - and then ate all of my okra. 
• The radishes never did amount to much, neither did the onions. 
• We got so excited that our carrots actually grew, we ate all of them when they were still "baby carrots." Oh boy they were good though! 
• We planted the pumpkin too late and while it had beautiful flowers, it never set a pumpkin. 
• The lack of rain made it hard for things to grow.
• The strawberries were probably already dead when I planted them. But what did I know! I thought they were supposed to look like that. 

And this year we're already having some adventures.

• I got the strawberries and then winter decided to let me know it wasn't done, we had snow up until May 1, I think, and only 12 of the original 20 were even remotely viable. They'd withered up in the house during that month.
• I got the 12 planted and then the deer - once again - made their presence known by tromping right through the strawberry patch. Minus another 3. The hail took out a few more. Now we're down to 3 of the original 20, but they look good so far! 
• I raised 5 tomato plants from seeds I kept from last year. One of the seedlings broke in the transplant. Another broke in the hail. The other 3 are doing great!
• I had no idea if my cucumber seeds I saved from last year were viable. I planted half of them, one struggled to pop it's head up, then a big storm came and beat everybody up and all the seeds were washed out on top of the mounds. Sigh. 
• So I planted the other half, then came another storm and it nearly broke one guy who was coming up (he's sort of leaning still) and his little buddy was gimpy with only one leaf because his seed case got stuck on him. To date, we have four cucumber plants up. Yay!
• The okra seeds from last year don't seem to be any good so I have to replant with store bought seeds. 
• Same with the butternut squash and patty pan. None of those guys are coming up either. Off to the store.
• Two pumpkin plants are up! Yay!
• The carrots look great. But how long can we wait to eat them?

Anyway, this gardening thing is something, but I really do love it.

One of the seedlings I raised! Isn't he beautiful?

Gimpy One-Leaf Cucumber and his friend, The Leaner, in the background.

Two pumpkin plants.

A happy row of carrots.