The Garden

I planted a garden yesterday. Its a garden I've been dreaming of for months now. I got my seeds in March, had my soil tested, read books, I even pretended for a little while I was going to go organic - all the stuff that was supposed to make my garden amazing. Before I even put my tiller to the ground I had a good picture in my head of what my garden was going to look like in July. The cucumbers were going to overflow into the tomatoes on one side and the squash on the other. I'd have watermelon and cantelope strung out on long vines into the farthest corner of my backyard. The corn was going to be taller than me with snap peas coming out the back all tangled in my fence. There were going to be raspberries and blueberry bushes plumping out toward each other getting ready to mercilessly fruit for me next year. Oh dreams.
I worked for six hard hours yesterday, tilling and hoeing and planting. I belive in work. Things looked satisfyingly ordered when I put my tools back in the garage last night. Then I woke up in the middle of the night to blue flashes and booms of thunder that felt like they were coming from across the street and rain that hit my siding hard enough to make me flinch for my seeds. It took me a while to get up the guts to look at my garden today, but I finally managed it. The tomatoes and peppers survived - they didn't go in as seeds. But some of the hills I had seeded were washed out and the rest of the hills looked piddlier than they did when I put them to bed last night. My vision of my garden turned into a few sickly, stray, unidentifiable plants hobbling out of my furrows or the middle of the lawn.
That's the kind of mentally tough girl I am. A night of rain after planting and my garden goes from an imaginary fecundity to an imaginary dearth.
I'm looking forward to one week from now. That's what it usually takes me. By that time I think I'll be able to see myself having a decent, slightly weedy, very unorganized, but productive enough garden. Productive enough that by September I should be back to big dreaming for next year.