If you’re like me, you’re scavenging up those last green tomatoes and tiny peppers in your garden, hoping to bring in one more late harvest before it all goes into the deep freeze for the season.

My late tomatoes aren’t getting any riper on their dwindling vines, so I’m going ahead  and picking them, figuring that they’ll have a better chance ripening in our warm house. And those green pumpkins that just never made it to orange are now sitting on my deck in hopes that the waning sun will do a better job in that spot.

I love my home garden, and anything I harvest out of it becomes an extra-special addition to our family meals. But the one thing I’ve learned as a vegetable/flower gardener and novice orchardist is that the growing process can be, well, brutally unpredictable...

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The garden was so pretty when they put it in, and I admired it each time I walked past.

There were daylilies, black-eyed sues, hostas and even a towering butterfly bush.

Going all out, the gardeners had included some whimsical ornaments amongst the plants that caught my eye and added to the overall tone of the place.

​It was a small lot, but it was a bright spot that brought joy to passersby like me.

A few years have come and gone since the garden first went in and today as I passed it, I was somewhat disappointed at what I saw. Jagged weeds were attempting a comeback, strange, ugly vines were towering over the perennials and a few bold toadstools were having their say in the whole matter.

No one is tending the garden anymore...