More sweat with very little to show for it

Don't things always take twice as long and turn out to be three times as hard? It takes muscles that I reconnect with every spring to break through clay, haul buckets of earth a few feet and fight that ongoing war against the weeds. I'm a proud owner of a gas-powered weeder now; mastery of this tool is right around the corner.
Patch #1 is complete now - tomatoes have been staked and caged, the marigolds are in and so are several seeds. The infant on the block are my carrot saplings that have their toothless smile on display all day. No alacrity or any signs of life from radish, basil and onions. That said, I've a secret patch of roots growing in the backyard - I'd sprinkled some of these left over seeds and gave it no more that in attention. This afternoon, I noticed several little green strips jutting out of the dirt. Some of them have pink heads - round and juicy beets in the making!