Posted by Heather Harris

Flea Beetle Damage on my Tomato

Black Aphids on the Fava Beans

Slugs Ravaging the Beans

Tomatoes Flowering

First Fava Bean Pod

Beans Getting true Leaves

Last weekend I bought a new car. Correction. My husband bought a new car. I was at home with the kids watching a YouTube video of a car salesman showing all the great new features of the mini van we were going to buy. I definitely got the better end of the deal. My salesman could be fast forwarded, skipped, paused, or ignored. Greg's was crammed in a cubicle with him, sweating through his cheap, ill-fitting suit, four boxes scrawled with hieroglyphics spread out on the tiny table,while ridiculous comments were spewing out of him like, "You can afford this! You only reallytwo meals a day!" (a car salesmen really said that to us once).I wasn't called down to the dealership until my signature was required, so I packed up the two kids and showed up with pen in hand hoping to spend a total of two minutes in there. But I forgot about that little room you're sent to at the end to get all of your paperwork from the weasliest guy of all, who's job it is to try and get you to buy the extended warranty after you already said you didn't want one. His job title is probably, "Chief Manager of Fear". Oddly, after you've just sat through hours of talk on how awesome your car is, his job is to explain what a piece of crap you just bought and how it's likely to fall apart moments after you drive off the lot. He had a silicone replica of a Styrofoam cup dumping coffee all over his desk. The kids couldn't take their eyes off it, spilled drinks being one of the most egregious sins in the world of childhood. He droned on and on about the three thousand computers in the car made by, "probably the lowest bidder in Taiwan" that were going to all die as soon as they were set out in the damp, Oregon air. Humidity is a killer. Don't you have medical insurance? It's the same thing! My family comes from a long line of teachers too. Bla, bla, bla.We left without the warranty as he shook his head like we were surely the most foolish car buyers he had ever seen. Which brings me, finally, to gardening. Purchasing plants, thank the Lord, does not require a salesman. For if it did, the Chief Manager of Fear would have so many terrifying facts to throw at you that we would all be be buying the extended warranties. Especially in May. Every pest that can threaten your newly planted vegetable garden comes crawling out of the earth in May, right when the seedlings are most vulnerable. Slugs, snails, aphids, flea beetles, cutworms, caterpillars, grubs, deer, rabbits, moles, migratory birds; they all seem to turn their ravenous, winter-starved guts towards the tender little shoots and seeds trying to make a start at life. I have cucumber seeds that went into the ground three weeks ago and I haven't seen them since. My tomatoes look like someone sprayed buckshot at their leaves. My bean starts have ragged, slimy holes chomped out of every primary leaf. Lettuce, once six inches tall, has been razed overnight. I have dumped three boxes of slug bait around the yard since March, yet the slugs keep coming! I sat by my tomatoes for over an hour with a sticky piece of packing tape wrapped around my hand trapping flea beetles. They were back, hopping jubilantly from leaf to leaf, the next morning.But there is hope. Because I know that my garden looked exactly like this last May. And like last year, I know that the beans' true leaves will push up past their decimated primary ones, I'll plant a few more cucumber seeds that will sprout, the tomato leaves will get too tough for the flea beetles weak little jaws, the slugs will eventually be under control, and one day soon I will be harvesting actual vegetables. It turns out, you need the extended warranty for your plants about as much as you need one for a car. Everything really will turn out all right. Doom is not waiting on the other side of the car salesman's sweaty handshake, or lurking in the moist verges of your vegetable bed. Everything will turn out exactly as it was meant too, and I tend to believe that it was meant to be good.