Failure in Heels

I mess up. A lot.

Like in any given day I have probably broken a heel, sat in chalk, and if it's a special day where I need to meet with someone very important I have most likely worn a white dress and spilled coffee down my front. I definitely walked across your freshly painted floor and brushed against the white board with my sleeve messing not only myself but everything you had written. My hair looks crazy because I probably ran to get here because I almost certainly realized too late that I was late.

In my garden it's no different; and humiliatingly, it's almost always my fault. I could mention the many, many stunted vegetable crops (my 3" corn cobs were of particular pride) because I either forgot to water or didn't bother to fertilize, trusting that my housing development was certainly built in the middle of some lush-ass farmland. I could mention the pumpkins I lovingly added fish emulsion and compost tea to while they grew poorly in a virtual rock garden. I could mention the entire bed of cauliflower I murdered because I didn't take the ten seconds to reread the article on making organic aphid spray out of soap and water to find out the proportions. My super concentrated soap spray killed the aphids and also left a barren wasteland of shriveled purple cauliflower obelisks as grim, resentful monuments to my own laziness.

But the worst is the strawberry fiasco.

Attempt #1: strawberry pot. Has lots of little pods on the outside of the pot. This is like a Spanish pottery staple so this must be a thing. Hmm. Seems like not much soil for all these plants to share. Also, what are spindly long things running out the sides? No berries anymore. Why? Martha Stewart did this exact thing on show. Maybe need fancier strawberry pot. Possibly reclaimed. Depending on what that should turn out to mean.

Attempt #2: hanging sack of soil thingy. As seen on TV!  Wonder if should use some kind of special soil...? Enh. It's expensive. Probably dirt from backyard is just fine since housing development certainly built in remains of unknown but presumably highly fertile farmland. Soil sack thingy box says will get a quart of berries from each plant! Hurrah! Strawberry jams, will most likely need to sell excess. Except berries are sour. Like REALLY sour. Um, basically inedible. And long spindly things are running over the side again. Minutes spent wondering what spindly things are: 127. Minutes spent googling spindly things: 0. Minutes spent on computer moving past Google home screen to Facebook: approximately 15879.

Spindly things.

Attempt #3: raised beds. AND spindly things running over sides are called runners! Am now strawberry expert. Carefully plant raised bed with strawberries and tomato plants, just fudging the recommended spacing directions by a few inches. Sure it's fine. Runners will make new strawberry plants. For free! Hmm. Strawberries are not producing though. Dammit. Runners are running.

Attempt #4: raised beds sans tomatoes. Apparently...tomatoes and strawberries kill each other. Like to the point that you can't plant strawberries in soil where tomatoes have been for THREE. YEARS. Okay. New acidic soil that berries will love. Acidic fertilizer. Organic compost. Bird netting.  Set up for some freaking SUCCESS, dammit.

Then came outside to see my terrier delicately pick a single strawberry through the bird netting, lift it over the bed side and carefully chew it through the netting. Through. The netting. Dammit.

Oh did I mention the slugs found the beds this year?

I mess up. A lot.

I think though, we make the assumption that farming or gardening is easy. Seeds, water, soil, sunlight. Even an idiot should be able to make that work. For gods sake if a FARMER can figure it out...!

My husband, a computer engineer who writes the software that makes planes fly themselves, was trying to install a drip irrigation system for my raised beds. He came in from the yard soaked from shirt to shorts and mad as, if you'll excuse the expression, a wet hen. "How can it be this hard? It is impossible that it is this hard and farmers do this. They wear overalls! They poke seeds in holes! They don’t even read!"

The irrigation system is still sitting out there on the lawn.

So, we mess up.

Failure in the garden is just going to happen. The one thing I learned (once I finally stopped being lazy and actually researching what I was doing) was the one thing I should have realized intrinsically--nature is complex. There are more variables in play than I will absolutely be able to control or even always anticipate (like where do the squash beetles come from if there are no other squash around? How did they find me? Why do they eat my squash?! Why?! Why?!) and that's just life. I can't take it personally no matter how the perfectionist in me screams "you idiot you have a master’s degree! You can't best a packet of seeds and some dirt? You're literally not as smart as the DIRT?!"

Nope. I still have a ton to learn. But I'm proud to say I have blueberry bushes producing a good quarter cup of berries every morning; snap pea pods on my carelessly sprouted seedlings; and even my poor strawberries, when you cut out the slug bites, are absolutely delicious. I'll keep trying to outwit the dirt. I haven't broken a heel farming so far.