HERE'S THE PART WHERE I WONDER WHY I'M DOING THIS

I seem to be much better at growing shrubs and perennials than I am at growing food. Everything non-edible in the garden is going great guns. The edibles? Not so much. I was so excited to come home from my most recent trip to Houston, and not find any new hoof-prints in the beds. For some reason the deer only visit when I'm out of town. How do they know? But, before I had too much time to celebrate, I noticed the other visitors who had snuck in to party while I was gone, and never bothered to leave.

I have pill bugs munching their way through my carrot and bean bed, plus some no-see-um who has drilled one tiny, perfect hole in many of the ripening pole beans, probably to fill them with baby no-see-ums. Stink bugs are making my Sweet 100's mottled and streaky, my cucumber refuses to do a damn thing, and then to top it all off, there are grasshoppers. Everywhere! On the other hand, some of my tomatoes actually did too well, shooting way beyond their tall supports, then flopping over on themselves, and everything in the bed around them, which is why my peppers are hardly growing. I should have harvestable carrots by now, but they are all still tiny -- perhaps a result of all the heavy foot traffic they received? I tried to re-fluff and straighten them again, but there's only so much you can do. Oh well, at least I'm still managing to harvest enough for my needs from the tomatoes, beans and basil. More than enough, actually, from my little roma tomato, Juliet. She's prolific!

Of course, now that I think about it, I wasn't always great at growing perennials. In fact, until I was in my 40's, I thought I had your classic brown thumb, and left all the gardening up to John. Maybe the reason my perennials are doing so well now, is that I've spent the last 10 or 15 years reading everything I could get my hands on, taking classes, learning through trial and error, and experimenting with a variety of plants until I came up with just the right palette of low maintenance plants for my particular plot.

Soooo, I guess maybe I should cut myself a little slack on these veggies, huh? After all, this is my first real stab at kitchen gardening, and as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day!