We had great carrots, beetroot, butternut squash,courgettes, and sweetcorn this year. The peas and beans were chomped to Kingdom come and the early Charlotte potatoes got the dreaded blight. However, we burned the blighted leaves and the potatoes have made a fine crop despite their early sickness. I planted lots of cut and come again lettuce and caterpillars got the lot. I now have them surrounded by gravel and tubs of Skol lager against the slugs and snails... a lovely second crop, despite the evil presence.

Cucumbers gone,

succumbed to the

cucumber beetle,

scourge, carrier of the

curcubit plague,

Peas gone, stunted

by the refusal of Spring,

and the sudden hot

onslaught of Summer,

Peppers gone,

crabbed little green

balls that sighed and

shriveled, perhaps upset

by the frightening example

set by its climbing neighbors.

Tomatoes, oh my tomatoes,

large and vigorous,

stripped of every fruit by

rapacious squirrels,

oh my tomatoes,

I uprooted you by root and stem

to refuse you to those

tail-twitchers, those

fence chewers, those delinquents

nibbling Grapes and Romas

and Better Boys,

refuse them my efforts,

my store, my expectations.

There are left only the carrots,

thin, asleep yet, well hidden

underground.

There I will pin whatever

hopes remain, that there

will be reward for effort, a proper

end to the works and the faith,

the seeding and the waiting.

See, I am pinning my hopes, turning away, 

I am leaving them to their own devices.