My cherry tomatoes are usually the pride and joy of my garden. They’re a ridiculous, messy, borderline “haunted garden” disaster area that gives the weeds a run for their money; they also produce a zillion amazing tomatoes. My late, beloved neighbor once told me that she had a bet with our other neighbor that I wouldn’t be able to grow tomatoes – and then was proud of me when she lost her bet. I’m that person who brings in cherry tomatoes to work because we can’t possibly eat all of them. My older son is constantly raiding the garden.

But not this year. And not just because I’m working from home. But because we have stumps sitting in our garden that have produced exactly zero tomatoes so far. At this point, we’ll be extremely lucky if we get any tomatoes at all this year.

It’s not for lack of effort. We had tall, gangly but beautiful tomato seedlings that I transferred into our garden back in May. When a frost hit long past when it was supposed to, I transferred a couple more. I loyally cared for them.

None of that was enough to keep away the deer. In the past, the deer have munched on our tomatoes, but never so early and never so thoroughly. (Why they enjoy eating the prickly plant that is related to nightshade, I have no idea.) I was just about to give up on the tomatoes when they started to grow back in full, with two nearly-ripe tomatoes ready to be picked. My older son was just waiting another day or two to stuff them into his mouth. Then I walked outside one morning to find another set of stumps.

Through it all, my kids have heard my moans and groans. But more importantly, they’ve watched me continue to take care of those damn plants. They’ve watched me spray terrible smelling stuff on them, twitching as I struggled not to smell it. They’ve watched me pull out piles of weeds that the tomatoes usually tower over. They’ve listened to my husband and I work to problem solve how we solve this problem next year (get a new fence). They’ve seen how I simply don’t give up even when all the hard work doesn’t have the result I want.

As frustrating as the situation is, I’m so glad my kids can see us deal with it. Too often, our society says – especially to privileged kids – that if only you work hard “enough,” you’ll be successful. Except that doesn’t always happen. The tomatoes are sort of a silly, unimportant example, but those silly examples are often what kids remember more than the big, life-changing ones. So it’s important that they see that sometimes bad nonsense just happens. Sometimes you have to deal with the disappointment, knowing there’s nothing you could have done differently. Sometimes you just have to accept that a situation is not how you’d hoped it would be but keep trying your best and moving forward anyway.