It was somewhat embarrassing. Not as mortifying as being elbowed by your wife because you were snoring in church, but still.

This fall, our garden yielded an embarrassment of riches. Last winter, when I was pining for summer, I begged the garden gods to grant me just a few pumpkins and gourds. A mischievous garden god must have grinned and said, “Hold my beer.”

I lost the crop about five times, which is typical for most growing seasons. First it was too warm and dry, then it became too cold and wet. This just proves the timeworn farmer’s adage that there are only five kinds of weather. Either it’s too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry. If it’s none of the above, it’s too good to last.

Weather wasn’t the only challenge I had to contend with. Shortly after planting my garden, an inspection revealed that several seed hills had been burrowed into and ransacked. The seeds’ hollowed-out remains were scattered conspicuously nearby, as if the varmint were sticking out its tongue out at me.

There was nothing to be done other than replant. This resulted in a repeat performance by the persistent pest. He or she probably thought that they had found an underground buffet that perpetually replenishes itself. The seed stealing ended after the third replanting. The thieves must have finally gotten full.

No small amount of blood, sweat and tears were expended to make the garden as smooth and flawless as, well, a garden. One day I happened to glance at the garden and saw our cat, Sparkles, digging a hole in its perfect surface. At least she filled the hole back in, which is more than I can say for the seed thieves.

I don’t know if Sparkles was trying to help me or was commenting on my gardening skills. I didn’t care to know, so I didn’t ask her about it.

At the beginning of the growing season, conditions were quite dry and remarkably hot. I watered the heck out of the garden, an activity that, as a rule, has the same effect on the weather as washing our car or cutting my hay. Conditions soon turned quite wet and remarkably cold. If you ever need rain, let me know and I’ll wash the car. I’ll even wax it for good measure.

The garden endured more tumult, weather-wise, than a sneaker in a clothes dryer. You would think that this would discourage the puny plants. The opposite proved true.

After weeks of weeding and worry, the garden achieved critical mass. I didn’t dare stand still in the pumpkin patch for more than a few minutes for fear that a vine would climb up my legs and entangle its greedy tendrils with my hair. There is already one hollow gourd atop of my shoulders, thank you.

String beans are an easy win for gardeners. It was a momentous day when I was able to gather enough beans for a meal for my wife and me. I boiled them a bit, baptized them with melted butter, and blessed them with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. As we ate the emerald pods, we wondered how we ever tolerated the stuff that comes from cans.

Our tomatoes vined out like the monstrous plant in “Little Shop of Horrors.” But they took their own sweet time to produce fruit. At long last, I was able to harvest a softball-sized tomato that had ripened in the summer sun. A BLT sandwich made with such a tomato bears little resemblance to one made with a commercially grown fruit. It’s as if your taste buds had only seen monochrome movies and are treated to a flick in glorious Technicolor.

Before long, we had enough tomatoes to make a batch of salsa. Then another batch and another. Fearful that the tomatoes would overrun our house, we began to give them away. I soon had to resort to alternative tomato population control methods. Let’s just say that our Jersey steers have acquired a taste for red fruit.

I was gobsmacked when pumpkin harvest arrived. There were pumpkins and gourds everywhere! I wouldn’t have been surprised to find some dangling from the treetops.

I filled the bucket of my loader with pumpkins and gourds. After we had given most of them away to friends and family, I went back to the garden and refilled the loader. After giving those away, I found even more of the stupid things. It was the cucurbit version of “Groundhog Day.”

In conclusion, our garden did extremely well this year. I think that Sparkles deserves at least some of the credit.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.