The Woodland Elf

Today I have officially given up on my pumpkin patch. It's not that I've given up on the pumpkins themselves, they're still there, it's just that I've given up on trying to rescue the patch from the weeds. When I first started it, I had the thing clean as whistle, all the weeds hoed out properly, it was great. But you know, the best laid plans of men and mice and all that...fast-forward two months later and the patch now looks more like a jungleland interior than a viable crop. I suppose it might have had something to do with the fact that work got busy which left me with only two days of being at home. For a while I squeaked along with that, but then the rain started and for some reason, the rain always seemed to fall on my two days off. So a couple weeks of rain and no hoeing and suddenly the patch is drowning. I went up there today to try and uncovered the buried treasure that was once my pumpkin patch, but found it too depressing. I knew I was never gonna get the patch back in shape in one day, the mosquitoes were driving me insane, and I had several orders to fill this week. Plus I rationalized that the pumpkins have already formed on the vines. If they can't make it on their own now, no amount of hoeing is going to save them. So I gave up. I'll still have plenty of pumpkins come fall, I'll just be picking them out of the weeds. On the bright side, the pumpkins themselves look really nice this year. Planted them in the prized manure patch; always produces a good squash crop.