Garden Envy

I do the best I can. I follow the experts' advice on nurturing. I ponder theories of growth, development, and healthy rearing. I invest quality time and am an active caretaker. But still, I feel like a failed parent lacking control over my brood.

My brood of vegetables, I mean.

My spinach bolted faster than a rabbit from a pack of wolves. My broccoli opted for an early glorious bloom before deciding otherwise. And some little jerk is eating my strawberries.

It’s not all gloom and doom in my garden, though. My herbs have been fantastic. My jalapenos are growing beautifully (which the banana peppers would be wise to take note). My tomatoes do OK. The rest of my plants, however, cause me to stand in aisles of the hardware store tempted to abandon the organic strategy in order to blast my plants with enough poison to kill those bugs who eat my veggies before I do. Who knew gardening would bring such feelings of wrath and vengeance?

My mom, as always, offers support and justification. It’s so hot, she says. It’s been awfully dry, she consoles. I’d believe her if not for the garden next door. My neighbor planted his first garden in a patch of yard next to ours, and it’s a masterpiece. The fencing around it is in danger of bursting at the seams from the force of massive vegetables unable to curtail their growth: cucumbers the size of my arm, banana peppers the size of zucchinis, zucchinis the size of small children. Clearly, his garden is mocking mine.

His garden has even infiltrated the peace of my home. My favorite place to pass time in the summer is at the table on our back porch, which offers an unfortunate view of both gardens. I look at his. I look at mine. I look at his. It’s like the Old Spice commercial: “I’m the man your man could smell like.” His is the garden my garden could grow like.

Making matters worse is that my neighbor is an extremely friendly, modest, and generous person. He drops by to bear gifts of gorgeous vegetables, and when I ask him his secret, he smiles, shrugs his shoulders, and supposes it’s luck. I want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and yell, “TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE USING! GIVE IT UP, MAN!” But instead I smile wanly and thank him for the bounty, inwardly reminding myself to give my plants an earful about their comparative laziness.

This morning, my neighbor emailed to say that he’s heading out of town, and I'm welcome to pick veggies from the garden while he’s away. As a token, he dropped off a huge, gorgeous cucumber on the table of our porch. Also on the table? My copy of “What’s Wrong With My Plant and How Do I Fix It?” along with one of my holey, bug-eaten tomatoes, left over from my diagnostic session the previous evening.

I swear I heard that cuke laughing. The knife I used to cut it was unnecessarily large and sharp.