Late in the season, the speaker looks over a garden that has gone wild. Tomatoes are rotting, peppers are slug-eaten, zucchini have swollen into hard-skinned monsters, and weeds and herbs sprawl everywhere. The speaker even wonders whether the huge yellow things are the cucumbers she planted. The poem lists all this in vivid, slightly gross detail, so the mess feels real.
Then comes a contrast. On paper, the garden was neat and perfect, with tidy rows and no bugs. Reality brought a hot July, a dry August, rabbits, and unplanned "volunteer" plants. The speaker admits she couldn't bring herself to pull the odd squashes by the compost.
The mood shifts from rueful to quietly delighted. The final lines show her surprised and a little amazed by "the garden that happens," a mix of "desire and chance and choice." The poem seems to suggest that life, like a garden, rarely follows the plan, and that's not a failure.