And sometimes it does. My first real effort at gardening was a vegetable garden, which supplied us with fresh peas, corn, lettuce and more things than we could manage to can for the entire summer. So the next year we tried again.
It was a miserable failure. Things emerged from the ground looking puny, and most were promptly eaten by deer. The seed packet didn't tell me about crop rotation, and nothing warned me that deer and rabbits will eventually find out about your garden and turn it into a gourmet restaurant. Nor did that seed packet tell me that soil needed to be replenished with nutrients to feed my second-year crop.
And so, clueless, I quit gardening for several years. I mean, if the seed packets don't tell you, who you gonna call?
Well, by the time I gathered up my courage to try again I had discovered this marvelous invention called the garden book. I found mine in a used book store for $3, and it was copyright 1946, so it didn't have all the up-to-date plants I was seeing in garden centers and catalogs. But it did tell me about soil preparation and fertilizer. I read those parts and ignored the parts about the plants. So this time when I scattered all my seeds (except I didn't scatter - I carefully laid them according to the recommended spacing) I was confident that I'd have a perfectly gorgeous garden. I didn't worry about deer either, because I thought I had outsmarted them by planting flowers instead of edibles.
I was wrong.
I had carefully selected my seeds for color, height, and size. I had planted them on the dates the seed packet advised. Some popped right up and bloomed. Some looked like they were sitting and sulking. And some may have made an appearance, but since I had no clue what they were supposed to look like without flowers, I didn't know if they were weeds or garden plants. Having skipped the "flowering plant" section of my garden book, I didn't know about annuals, perennials and biennials. I thought you planted and got flowers. Abracadabra - presto - a garden!
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