Our Garden Experiment

Well, it's fall and it should be harvesting time. It should be. Not this year. Arizona and I are at war. In the spring before I got sick and discovered I had arthritis, we planted a garden. Not a giant one, mind you. Not like our last one in Maine. We thought we would start conservatively. Corn, pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupe and a few squash. We watered like we were supposed to. You know, I actually thought it would be lack of water that would keep my garden from growing. But the weather was not my enemy. No, it couldn't be that easy. The water was the problem. Let me explain. Where we have moved to, it was barren. We live in the southeastern part of Arizona and except for mesquite trees, there was nothing except sand. Sand everywhere. We couldn't even leave the windows of the house open for all the sand and dirt that would blow into the windows with the slightest breeze. But put a little water on it and, well, that is a different story. In my garden area, so picked because there was nothing else growing in it, grew weeds that were indestructible. In the beginning of my illness I was still able to weed because the weeds were still small. Then the boys started doing the weeding, but the weeds won. Soon they outgrew my poor plants. Now, we were able to save some of the plants. But then the pesky little critters, you know birds, squirrels, raccoons and who knows what else, decided that my little plants looked like good food. So little by little, the plants disappeared leaving only small holes in the ground. A few plants did survive the giant weeds, and starving critters. I was actually proud that I had a few corn stalks left and what I thought were watermelon and pumpkin plants left. Last night, apparently, something ran off with the baby corn. Was I disappointed! Well, my other plants have started to produce. But they look nothing like watermelon or pumpkins! Some weird long curled up green type of wild squash, I guess. What an experiment! Quite different from my garden in Maine where I had so much I had to give it away, I couldn't put it all up. Well, that's life - at least out here anyway. But my dear husband tells me that maybe another move is coming - to Wyoming. Oh, today I am especially excited about that one!