Zen and the art of vegetable planting

The weather and my garden soil (which I amended with too much chunky compost too close to seed-planting time, I fear) conspired against me this year, which means that instead of getting entire beds of cut-and-come-again baby lettuces, I got a scattering of lettuces that I decided to let grow to full size.

So my garden produced lots of lettuce (more than even I could eat), but later in the season. I used to get a little worked up about this sort of unexpectedness, but this year I'm just too busy to micromanage the veggie patch the way I once did, leading me to mellow out and just accept that sometime things play out in ways you didn't expect. Seeds, and vegetables, are living things. Sometimes, they're just going to do what they're going to do.

I had 100% failure of my beet plantings (usually a failsafe crop for me), but my carrots (a hit-and-miss crop for me) are doing fantastic. Go figure.