Woe Is My Garden

As if the rodent visit wasn't tragedy enough, last night it rained.

And rained and rained.

I'm not sure how much it rained. We have a rain gauge. It's even in the garden. But the garden isn't a garden anymore. It's a pond full of isolated islands of mud. I didn't bother wading in to see how bad it is. I won't be able to tell what survived until it dries out anyway. One end is drier than the other end. Unfortunately, it's the end with the cabbages & broccoli, not the end with the tomatoes. I know parents aren't supposed to have favorites, but if I had to choose I'd rather let the cabbages & broccoli drown & save the tomatoes.

As if last night's rain wasn't bad enough, it's supposed to rain more today and maybe tomorrow, too. If I had enough money I'd buy a couple loads of topsoil & raise the garden six or eight inches. But first I'd load the garden up with rotten logs.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough money. I can always save my pennies. Maybe by this fall I can afford some improvements. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to do in the garden. I'd really like to get some plywood & make raised beds, but I did a quick guestimate on how much it would cost & it came out somewhere between No Way In Hell and Maybe In My Next Lifetime. I'd also like to put in some fancy trellis system, something involving metal pipes & concrete, but that would cost more than the raised beds. And then there's the irrigation system, which would finish the draining of my bank account that is my fantasy garden.

Plant a garden, they said. Save some money, they said.

Take a trip to the poorhouse, I said. With a side trip to the funny farm, I said.