Res-o-puh-leese

Real Green Shoots: A Disappointing Bounty

*When I planted my little garden, lo those many weeks ago, I had visions of overflowing baskets full of leafy basil, hearty thyme, and delicate rosemary, the theme song to Green Acres playing full blast in my head.

And yet, after the wettest June in a century, interspersed with hot, dry weekends when I was far from my little garden, my plants remain sunburnt and stringy, and the theme song is less Green Acres than the Opening Song to The Secret Garden musical (you know, where all the characters get cholera and die). It doesn't help, of course, that I also came across Martha Martha Martha (perfection thy name is Stewart) glowing over the Edible Herb Garden she developed for the New York Botanical Garden (it is full of baby bunnies and "many fragrant herbs and plants." Le sigh).

How did it come to this? Can my garden be salvaged? Should I dig everything up, plant some pumpkins, and never look back? Come, dear readers, on a photographic tour of my little slice of paradise.

My depressingly stringy thyme.
Let us remember that the thyme was planted April 29,
more than 10 weeks ago (average planting-to-harvest time? 6 weeks)

I think this is something that someone who doesn't know
much about plants would say is sage.
Again, that's just a guess.

These are my cosmos. They are far and away doing the best,
which is fantastic because there's nothing like cosmo salad

Marigolds, I think.
Really everything just looks sort of green and stubby

Except for these zinnias, which are brown and stubby.

I'm curious to see what happens to these sweet peas.
The package said they are "prolific growers."
I think mine have achievement anxiety.

This planter makes me sad.
It was full of cheerfully-growing herbs before 40 days of rain washed them out.
By the time I got back after a particularly rainy weekend,
My little plants looked like kelp, gently swaying in the waves.
Only the cosmos (I planted them twice) survived.

Troopers.

These lush beauties are truly the only thing to thrive.
About two weeks ago they were covered in gorgeous purple flowers,
and the little buds already growing promise more.
The catch?
No one planted them. My former roommates left the planter on the balcony two years ago
and haven't watered or tended to it in a year.
Sigh.

*More than two posts in one week?! Quell surprise.