A Fear of Vegetables

A Forest of Celery

While working through this gardening endeavor and attempting to keep everything alive, I’ve definitely experienced subtle waves of anxiety. I imagine that this uneasy feeling arises from my naivety in gardening, but it surprising to me. It’s not like this is the first living thing that has fallen under my care and supervision. I have a rambunctious Labrador mix who likes to pin unsuspecting flies against our living room window and eat them. I could not imagine a more terrible fate. Being so small and attempting to escape to the outside world, yet barred by a translucent barrier. The horror of 

Blurry Fish

being snatched out of the air by a set of slobbery jowls rivals the fate of Faustus. Even with my dog’s ravenous nature towards flies, I do consider myself a responsible pet owner. Yet, I do not understand why plants have me on edge. If I fail completely I can easily replace the lost crop with specimens from the farmers market. It doesn’t make sense and I would like to know if this is just another form my own neuroses have taken, or if it is a common phenomenon. I hope it is the latter. I do have a certain zeal for success and crispy bell peppers.  

Crazy Bean

In addition to my green fears I have also observed that bean seedling do make a frightening spectacle to behold. After watching my own hatch the last few days I think they would look more at home on a neon purple planet. I’m growing my own little shop of horrors Audrey II. Thankfully my fish do bring a sense of normalcy to this experiment and I do believe they are well contented with swimming about their 50 gallon tank. I also have an 80 gallon tank connected with an automatic syphon to balance the water levels. One of my fears is that one of my fish will get adventurous and possible trapped in the pipe between the tanks. Gardening is a risky business.