The End of the Pitiful Gardening Year

Let me just say that my gardening efforts were lame this year.

I blame it on the rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks in the yard that thwarted my efforts at every turn.
Yeah, it was all their fault...... ;-)

They always go after freshly planted seeds and even dig up young sprouts.
Which means we have to keep reseeding until they leave enough of the seeds/sprouts alone that we have plants.
The only plants we ended up keeping alive this year were ones I planted from seedlings--tomatoes and cauliflower.
And of the cauliflower plants, only 3 made it.
And of those 3 only 1 actually grew a head.
And here it is......

For size comparison it is about the size of a softball.
LOLZ
Hey, I am thrilled we actually grew even THIS this season!
I didn't think we'd even get this if you must know.  This tiny head finally just appeared last week.
I was thinking up until then that we had gotten sterile plants or had NO meaningful bee activity this Summer in the yard.   Well, I KNEW there was some bee activity since the tomato plants all pollenated.....


Since we couldn't keep seeds long enough to sprout and grow enough to keep from being dug up Hubs never put the fencing up. 
Not that the fencing is much of a deterrent to any critters anyway, since it's a tree netting type fence with spaces larger enough for rabbits, chipmunks and squirrels to get through.  It must have worked though in years past to keep the deer far enough away to keep from CLEAR CUTTING foliage, like they did this year.
sigh.

I think we've had more critters eating stuff in the yard the last 2 years.
I blame the new housing development they added on to our development, which took some of the wildlife habitat where these critters use to live and forage in.  Since it started going up we've seen many deer and even bear tromp through the yard.  Just last week we found our garbage can 30 feet from where we keep it in the yard and the bags ripped open.
That was no raccoon but a bear.
Trust me.
I lived in the Poconos.
I know a bear picnic laid out when I see it. lol
Plus we saw another bear cutting through our backyard last month.

But I digress.....

Then the weather was not conducive this Summer to growing much of anything.  Not enough hot days and not strung together in any way that helped plants to grow and develop and fruit.

And I was away for 2 weeks in July, right in the middle of the growing season.  This meant nobody here to water or weed or fuss over the garden during the primetime.

So we are pretty much a bust this year in the harvest department.
We did get a small amount of tomatoes.
And my morning glories, which were ALL volunteer plants from the plants that dropped seeds last Fall were glorious and put on quite the show every morning for me.

Was it only 4 years ago my garden produced just shy of 94 pounds of food?!?
Yep, it was 2010 back HERE.

So how did your garden produce(or not)this Summer?


Sluggy