The garden is so dramatic I just want to light myself on fire.

You lookin' at me?

Last year we had a very cold and very wet spring. It went on forEFFINGever. It caused problems for some plants in the garden and improved conditions for others.

It was weird.

Speaking of weird...

This year we're having a very warm and very dry spring. It's been going on forEFFINGever. It's causing problems for some plants in the garden and improving conditions for others.

It's weird.

No problems here.

The real weird part though is that when I compare this year's garden now to last year's garden at this time - it looks strangely similar.

So, perhaps, nothing weird is going on at all and just people like to get dramatic about the weather because they've all been watching too much The Weather Channel where newsworthiness is a yet-to-be-embraced concept and a gust of wind can inspire a Severe Weather Alert involving out of breath announcers crying End of Days into their clip-on mics.

Take the tomatoes for instance...

Last year

This year

Apparently lots of rain or not so lots of rain and the tomatoes just forge ahead.

And the lettuce...

Last year

This year

Sure, I have to keep the lettuce shaded under some landscape fabric pinned super sophisticated and not a all hillbilly-like to the cucumber trellis, but still - samesies with last year growth-wise.

But the cucumbers? Oh. That's another story...

Last year they were on their, what, FOURTH sowing. Lame.

This year? BOOYAHKASHAW! AKA - they are doing well.

Remember the grapes? Yeah. They are a whole new woman this year.

Last year at this time, I was all, "Oh, I hope they get up on the cable sometime in the next YEAR."

This year, the grapes are all, "We're on it, woman, and we'll thank you to stay out of our personal affairs."

So, what I've derived from this weather inconsistency OH MY GOD LA NINA EL NINO ARMAGEDDON is that it doesn't really matter, as far as the plants are concerned anyway, whether the spring is super wet and cold or super dry and warm, as long as someone's keeping an eye on them so that they don't either mold in the wet or burn in the sun.

Not like I'm trying to discredit the existence of global warming or whatever because OH WOW do I not want that kind of crazy brought down upon this blog, but I am glad that when I went to consult last year's garden blog posts I didn't see that I was way behind.

That's all I want in life, really, is for my garden to outperform last year's every single year.

Which is why I'm pretty fucking glad I planted this Green Giant Tomato because damn.

Yeah. See the Hillbilly tomato at the front of the bed? No? Right.

This guy's getting ready to eat everyone's lunch. And then BE my lunch. Or whatever.

So, yeah - let's get to outperforming already.