The fall has arrived. You know what that means: Pretending you know what people are talking about when they mention their fantasy football team. Christmas and Halloween decorations somehow up in stores at the same time. And, of course, cooling temperatures.
You may be tempted to listen to the local weatherman and cover us, your garden, to keep us safe from the frost. Please, for the love of God and all that is holy, don't do this. After months of neglect and being lost entirely to weeds months ago, just let us peacefully die.
You started off with so much passion and excitement in the spring, planning to be self-sufficient during the pandemic, reading gardening tips, gathering seeds, buying those gardening gloves. In hindsight, you probably should have spent more time tilling the ground than posting seductive selfies in your gardening hat, but that's okay. You at least remembered to put seeds in the ground you didn't till. You know, between completely dishonest shots of you holding a hoe. It wasn't even yours. You just made jokes about “hoeing around the garden” before putting it away because you weren't sure what to do with it.
Okay, but after you got the Instagram shots, you really did put some focus on our well-being. You watered us occasionally. You half-heartedly shooed bugs away. You even pulled a couple of weeds! I mean, you pulled several actual growing vegetables out, too, but that's okay. You didn't grow a garden to eat or anything. You didn't need to hold onto those vegetables. The decaying romaine lettuce in the fridge speaks to that. Why were you growing a garden again? Nevermind, it's not important. The fact is, you were growing us.
As the summer wore on, some radishes successfully grew, which is weird since you didn't actually plant any. We celebrated with you as you enjoyed that harvest, regardless. You had a goal of a county fair-sized squash. You actively cultivated the squash plant for minutes each week because you coveted that prize. Plus, you'd heard about spaghetti squash and wanted to give it a try. Then you remembered that actual pasta was all ready for you at the store, and was not made of vegetables. You also saw how big last year's winning squash was and didn't want to lug one that size all the way to the fairgrounds for the virtual competition. We were then actively ignored for a week. Fortunately, it rained once, so we got a little hydration.
By August, you had gone back to your hundreds of pandemic puzzles, and we were languishing alone in the backyard. Well, not really alone, weeds continued to grow and slowly overtake us. At least we had stifling company. Apparently, these plants don't realize there's a pandemic on and think social distancing isn't for them. You obviously didn't either, since you had the audacity to eat actual spaghetti with several friends in front of the squash who'd had dreams of fulfilling its spaghetti destiny but was now slowly drying out and being perpetually caressed by multiple invasive plants.
Listen, we know you gave it a go and we did have some good times. However, we are beseeching you to put us out of our misery and just let the frost take us. The tarp cover is no fun. Knowing you will probably forget to take it off in the morning makes this even worse.
Plus, our annoying invasive roommates keep making puns and saying, “Weed love if you went out with us sometime,” and “we've been weeding through our friends, and we like you the best,” and “you know what our favorite breakfast is? Cream of Weed!”
Please, if you have mercy, let this end. And don't try to grow another garden next year. Buy produce you won't eat at the store.