One Mile/Harvest at a Time

It's not your imagination, I really have been a bit neglectful of the blog garden lately. In an attempt to justify this (and let's collectively be glad that I don't currently have children or pets) my mind and energy have been focused on other things.

Flashback:
As a young Urban Farm Girl I spent much of my time in the gym. You know those girls you see cartwheeling around on front lawns and on the school yard? I was one of them. Anything that was close to being four inches wide I made into a balance beam. To this day I have broken ceiling fans (because who doesn't vault off of their parents' bed) but no bones. Sometime around the very beginning of high school I traded in my chalky hands for sneakers.

Present Day:
I have been known to do things on a whim, to turn a coincidence into a "sign." After coordinating with former college roommates to meet up in San Francisco (a city where none of us reside) I saw that the San Francisco half marathon was also taking place. I immediately thought, "No way! The same weekend?!?! This must be a sign. I should definitely sign up for it."
So I did. <--Who does that???

With little training, except for some after work jogs and a 10K two weeks before the race, I showed up yesterday to run my 13.1 miles. Here's what I already know about myself, I have the love of sport in me. Maybe it's the athlete inside that comes up for air every now and then (although it's buried pretty deep these days) or those Kaiser commercials that have brainwashed/convinced me to "Thrive," but either way I found my runners high somewhere between miles six and eight. By Mile 10 the sharp pain that had been searing through my legs disappeared and I thought to myself "Oh my God, I can't feel my hamstrings anymore."

Then, the people. The people, around every corner all along Haight Street, including that storied intersection where it meets Ashbury, with their home made signs "Keep Running!!!!", "You're Run-derful", "One Mile at a Time." There was that middle age man shouting, "Stay positive. This is what makes you better than the spectators!" He, of course, was himself a spectator. And that's what is so wonderful about Sport. Because they're cheering as hard as you're running and for all those miles we're on the same team, Team: Good, Team: Be Better, Team: Do something new, something you might fail at and go boldly. <--Congress, take note.

What does any of this have to do with gardening? Well, I fail a lot at it. My bell peppers never grew to more than three inches and were completely inedible and my second bok choy crop never materialized at all. But here's what my 13.1 mile journey did for me, besides restore some of my faith in humanity, it reminded me that it's fine to limp along (hello, precious moments trapped in Murphy's Law hell), but make sure to run across the finish line. It's like they say, and by "they" I mean the universal sports enthusiasts, finish strong. So clearly my garden is limping along right now, but I'm not done. That unconditionally supportive hero boyfriend might even say that I'm just beginning.

Lastly, go ahead and sign up to walk that 5K, run that 10K or go for that big, bad triathlon. Like the SF Marathon runner shirts this year read it's "worth the hurt." Also, I want to cheer for you.

You'll find that I've documented my gardening failures with the sad pictures below. Please note, the beastly carrots hurt the most.

You see that carrot, right? Fourth from the right? I don't even know...

The cherry tomatoes, which are doing quite well, are in the picture to put the bell pepper's petite-ness in perspective.

This was not edible.