I thought I knew how to garden

I was talking to my mom about my garden this morning and feeling pretty hopeful. Even though a few of the plants I planted had died, I'd planted other ones in their place and figured I'd learned lessons for next year.

What I forgot was to go out and shade some of my seedlings from the sun. This is not something that's usually necessary, but I didn't get my wimpy seedlings very used to the sun, and they have been frying in it. So I just remembered now and went out to survey any damage.

What I found was half-empty beds. A few seedlings that were doing fine yesterday were gone completely -- and I found their shriveled remnants, uprooted, elsewhere in the garden. One of the strongest ones had its stem snapped - by what? - and it will finish dying in the next few hours. Some others were sun bleached and dead of natural causes, including a couple I planted just yesterday. Just a few look okay.

I'm not sure what happened. What would uproot my plants? I'm going to plant a few more homegrown seedlings this evening and buy some better ones to fill out the beds at the farmer's market on Saturday. And maybe the squash seeds I planted will come up stronger, since they've known nothing but the outdoors.

The blackberries and raspberries are my consolation. They look happy, it seems.