Garden Dreams

I am so thankful for the garden on days like this:
We have just returned home from an eight day trip. There is nothing in the fridge but a dubious jar of tomato sauce and a whole bunch of condiments. The cupboard is bare save for a some dried grains and flour. The last thing I want to do is go to a grocery store. So I pull up a couple carrots, harvest some sugar snap peas, and send Trevor outside to snack on raspberries, strawberries and blueberries while I cook up the goods in a pot of quinoa. Only Todd can reach the precious cherries that have ripened in our absence.
Mind you, our garden is far from extravagant. My vision in spring is immense. We have Japanese eggplant, four kinds of basil, rows and rows of carrots, onions, leeks, seven different kinds of greens, not to mention lettuces, a succession of broccoli, squashes, cucumbers, yard long beans, pole beans, fat heirloom tomatoes, tomatillos, cilantro, sweet and hot peppers, potatoes, you name it...I have long pored over the seed catalogs picking just the varieties we need. Hmmm, something seems to happen when it comes time to plant. Seed packets are forgotten under piles of bills. Babies require nursing. Vegetable starts wither in their pots. Weeds choke the garlic and the leeks are forgotten.
Still, we manage to plant a few things (always tomatoes, and spinach that bolts before I can summon a taste for it.) The peas topple over the inadequate structure we've cobbled together, smothering the carrots and lettuces. The raspberries invade the beds and I don't have the heart (or can't find the gloves) to rip them out. I never stake the tomatoes and they lay rotting on the ground. We leave town. It's not hot enough, it's too hot, it's raining, it's not raining. Trevor pulls up rows of onions and eats all the green blueberries.
But, still, with a maximum of dreaming and a bare minimum of effort (why didn't I plant cucumbers, dang it?), somehow there is a harvest of something. And this undeserved bounty starts the cycle over again...if I try just a wee bit harder next year, the garden of my dreams will bloom exponentially.