Seasonal Deathmatch: Spring vs Winter

Every year since we bought our home, we have attempted to grow a vegetable garden.  The first one was pretty small.  We planted four crops.  But it was a decent first effort.  

Last year turned out to be a bit of a debacle, with diseased tomato plants, an overpruned raspberry bush, yet another failed attempt at squash, and only one healthy crop -- cayenne peppers.  Which I still haven't used.  But it was a learning experience.

Despite our black thumbs, we really enjoy the idea of gardening.  Watching the plants grow, harvesting the fruits, knowing that this food came from your own backyard...  It's a wonderful feeling.  And it just makes everything taste better.  Not to mention being kind to your wallet.

However, we still aren't so good with the preparation stage of gardening.  Or the planting stage.  Or really the maintenance stage, either.

Our typical gardening endeavor looks like this:

Mid-May stop by the picked over garden store and attempt to find plant seedlings that don't look like they've been stomped on and resurrected. 

Cross our fingers that the plants don't die in the week that it will take us to actually get them into the ground. 

Walk by the hose everyday thinking, "Oh, I should really water the garden...  But it'll have to wait until I have a free moment...  Next Wednesday." 

The plants continue to grow against all odds and we become unable to distinguish the weeds from the real plants, so we figure, "Eh, they'll figure it out."

As the fruits of our labor weigh down the stalks of our warrior plants, we do our best to prop them up with random pieces of scrap lumber and string, because we care.

And when the plants look like they may have lost the good fight, we jump in to hack away the death that is draining their life blood, however, it's just too little too late...

But this year was going to be different!  We bought seeds!  We were going to grow carrots, and potatoes, and beets, and onions.  Which all need to be sewn into the ground...  Oh, about a week ago.

But you may have heard about a little bad weather we've been having up in these here parts.

This would be a shuttle bus that was almost hurled off the top of a parking garage at the airport.  But despite all the damage that was left by the tornado that swept through St Louis last Friday, we are damn lucky.  Because no one was fatally injured.  And my heart goes out to all the people in the Southeast that are suffering the loss of so many due to a monstrous storm system that passed through Alabama and it's neighboring states just days ago.

Apparently Spring is in a competition with Winter to see who can screw with us more.  And I never thought I'd say that I think Spring is winning. 

The past week has brought us day after day of rain, storm warnings, and now flooding. 

Not exactly ideal gardening weather.  But that's not going to keep us from getting the garden in the ground.  Because I have this compulsive desire to pull food from the earth.  And I hate paying $2.99/lb for tomatoes that taste like nothing.