The Impossible Garden--Why bother?

One day last month,  I bought tall green chard, tender sweet pea pods, and broccoli like I have never been able to grow, from the local farmers at the Market. For about $3.00 I bought 3 or 4 times the scant handful of tough pea pods I was able to glean from the tangle of pea plants in my own garden. The chard I bought was three times as tall and full as the little leaves of my chard, which is embraced on every side by the pea plants.

I thought,  Dad always told me gardening was a waste of my time. Is he right? Or is it just that I am a novice and haven't yet learned the fundamentals of creating a healthy garden?

Today I compared photos of the garden a month or two ago with what is blooming now. I'm eating beautiful green kale, and the nasturtiums are so beautiful I decorated a wedding cake with them. I never did stake the scarlet runner beans properly, so their gorgeous red flowers are growing in a tangle all over each other.

Maybe my gardening style is a bit on the wylde side.