Roots & Vine

Before you become pregnant you pretty much take the baby's nine-month gestation period for granted. It's a system that works - right?
Then you become pregnant and you start reading up on things and you learn out about spina bifida, cleft palates, heart defects, anencephaly, fused limbs, and progeria and you realize that with all that's got to go exactly right in those nine months it's a miracle any baby is ever born healthy at all.
It's sort of the same thing with gardening. When you first start, or when you're first considering starting you think, "how hard can it be? You plant a seed and water it right?" But then you get started and you learn about rabbits and moles and slugs and white flies and cucumber beetles and squash mildew and blight and pretty soon you realize that it's a wonder any vegetable ever reach maturity at all. 
The difference between developing babies and developing bean plants is that (so far) we don't encourage expectant mothers to douse themselves in chemical insecticides for their nine-month growing season.

song: Roots & Vine • artist: Sons of Fathers