This year's been an odd one in my garden. Some of my old stalwarts have struggled, and promising new growth has been unexpectedly stunted.
The butternut squash which flourish with wild abandon most years haven't sprawled across my yard. Their great glorious golden flowers and fattening fruit have been half of a typical summer's production.
My okra, now in its third year, are yielding but dwarfish, standing thigh-high where last year they were now already towering over my head. It might be the heat, and that we're still a bit behind on rain for the year is likely a factor, my regular watering aside. Or it might be the soil, particularly for the butternut, where the hugelkulture beds that have always shown the greatest production probably needed a refresher of decaying wood prior to the start of the next season.
My trusty bush beans have also struggled, although that's more a factor of my taking an unexpected nine day vacation right as they were starting to produce. That first wave of beans was missed entirely. I don't mind that they went to seed, though, because last year's seed crop was devoured by marauding deer...again, when I was on vacation.
Even the sturdy sunflowers seemed slow to get going, although they're now once again feeding pollinators and beaming down beneficently at passers-by.
The majority of my efforts haven't been optimal. But there are exceptions.
I cut my tomato planting by 60%, as I was convinced that the bed-density of earlier years had contributed to fungal blight. Only four plants went in, and they've done wonderfully. Pico de gallo and caprese and bruschetta have been present in abundance lately, and I'm enjoying regular vegetarian BLTs with sweet slices of those homegrown 'maters. Also abundant: my basil, which started slow but has rebounded, contributing to multiple rounds of pesto and the aforementioned bruschetta, both of which also draw on my copious garlic harvest.
In all of this, I'm reminded that I am just a suburban gardener. A weak year for me isn't a threat to my livelihood, and it doesn't carry with it the fear of famine. It's simply a thing to observe and learn from, part of the wild and joyous variety of God's complex and unpredictable creation.
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