Here in Pennsylvania, it’s been a rainy summer. All in all, in these parts, it’s a generally rainy life, the routine weather so grossly unpredictable that no matter what season it is, I carry my trusty laptop in a water-resistant case. But even so, June and July of this year have been especially sodden. Consequently, my husband and I are coping with a lethal (at least to plants) combination of bad weather and gardening. Needless to say, it’s taken its toll on my family.
Our garden hasn’t always been such a sad sight. A couple years ago, that verdant slice of our backyard was pristine. We harvested basket after basket of kale along with plenty of tomatoes and beets. Our crowning achievement of 2013, however, was our pumpkin crop. We pulled in over forty pie pumpkins, and even after dozens of delicious recipes, some of the puree lives in our freezer still. Oh, the pumpkin pies and pancakes and muffins we created from that crop! It was a veritable Halloween paradise!
Flash forward to 2015, and we have no tomatoes, beets, or kale. It’s a grocery store winter for us. Fortunately, though, our pumpkins are not yet down for the count. In fact, out of all of our produce-to-be, those big-leafed green plants with the pretty orange blossoms are the only ones that not only haven’t surrendered but are actually flourishing. Sure, there are plenty of rainwater-sucking weeds hanging out with them, but the garden has room enough for both, right?
So that’s my tale of woe concerning bad weather and gardening. How is your garden this year? Too much rain? Too little? Share your stories below! It will be a green thumb catharsis, I’m sure.
Happy haunting!