Checking on the Fall Garden

This newly-passed summer was not kind to us. We burned. We hibernated. We missed out on park trips (the equipment was hot enough to burn us starting in May), time in the driveway with our most beloved chalk, and eating outside. We also missed out on a decent garden. We tried, but alas, it just didn't happen.

Those poor spring sprouts didn't stand a chance. For the sturdier little plants that made it past the first few weeks, their reward was a plague of almost every pest and problem in the book. By the time summer broke, there wasn't much left in our beds besides fire ants and weeds.

Ever the optimist, I set about reviving our tired potager one last time, and planted a few seeds with fingers crossed. This afternoon, my sous gardeners and I took a walk to check out the Fall Garden to see how things were faring...

Teenie tiny little daisy-like flowers leading to the garden 'gate'

Our mammoth catmints

The weird second-generation icicle radishes we planted from
home-harvested seeds (they're purple)

Green beans... finally!

The only surviving lettuce sprouts, growing in the gravel path where the seeds from the bolted spring lettuce fell

Some hearty kale

A few white onions struggling through yet another fire ant bed

Tantalizing... tomato blossoms!

Garlic chive seeds and a perfectly disguised stinkbug

A volunteer watermelon of some kind

Our amazing, resilient, survived-the-summer zucchini 

The girl sprout

The boy sprout (yes, that's a crushed yellow marigold in his hand)

Bountiful, beautiful marigolds

Parsley, parsley, and more and more parsley (not complaining!)

These garden beds have certainly seen much better, but they've also looked much worse. The simple fact that we've been able to work in a few home-grown veggies and herbs into at least one meal a day, even after the summer we had, makes me feel successful...

...even if they are a little strange...