In the spring, when the world ran out of toilet paper and gallons of milk were rationed, I naturally decided this was the year to plant a garden.

I’ve planted gardens before but I avoid them because of a character defect: I hate to pull the weeds in the garden.

But this year, I vowed, would be different. That is my usual garden spring vow but let’s not go there. It had been years since I planted a garden and I figured I had matured a bit.

My dear husband had a better idea. Why didn’t I use raised garden plots so I didn’t have to get down on my knees to weed? And he happened to have some plastic 55-gallon barrels that we could cut in half, drill holes in the bottom for drainage, and have the garden we’d always dreamt of.

You know, low maintenance and high produce.

We put in compost and fertilizer and top soil and then planted. Tomatoes. Peppers. Acorn squash. Pumpkin.Onions. Zucchini.

The plants started to grow with great gusto. I watered, I weeded, they grew. Reasonable partnership, I thought.

And then I noticed the tomato plant leaves were starting to curl. What in the world? I checked. The ground was moist. There were NO WEEDS in the pot.

Soon the other tomato plants began to wither. The green pepper plants lost their leaves and the pumpkin greenery sprawled on the ground like a sloth.

The zucchini vine threw out a single squash and then breathed its last. One tomato plant produced three tomatoes but had no leaves left. Once the tomatoes were plucked from its twiggy trunk, it went into hibernation. That’s commitment to your offspring, I’d say.

The jalapeño plant looked great, however, and there hung several fiery-red peppers about an inch long. I could almost hear them snarl when I removed them from the plant. If bugs were the issue, as I was starting to suspect, they apparently had no taste for feisty jalapeños.

So, from my grand garden plans, I harvested 3 pink tomatoes, one zucchini squash, and 12 microscopic but muscular jalapeño peppers.

At this point, my garden resembles a bomb site with green sticks standing askew in the barrels.

There’s good news and bad news to this story. The good news is that I don’t have to can or freeze or dry any produce. The bad news….

Well, as my daughter said, “Mother, you managed to kill a zucchini?”

But there were no weeds in its pot, so I guess it’s all good news.