Success! Shortly followed by less success.

So, last week, I was all set to take pictures and put an update here and all that. And you know what? I charged my camera's batteries, took pictures, and put off updating until the morning. Everything looked great. In fact, here's a look at just how great it all looked.

Okra!

This squash is not an acorn squash, even though I only planted acorn squash. It grew at the same time and in the same place as the other acorn squash, but...
Not an acorn squash. (We're thinking it's a spaghetti squash. Maybe a volunteer? That was inspired to grow right where I planted the acorn squash? At the same time as the acorn squash? Maybe it's really a mutant.)

Here's the other half of the garden.
Camouflaged squash~
Meh, this guy got attacked by a boring bug. As in, it ate the vine from the inside and killed the plant, not the bug itself was boring.

This is a cantaloupe. Healthiest sucker in the whole garden, I think, but there are only signs of baby cantaloupe so far.

So I'm working up to a tragedy, and this picture is probably a good show of it. The evening after I took all these pictures, it poured rain. The rain must have washed away all my soap (a.k.a. deer deterrent), and, subsequently, all the leaves below the red line were eaten off of this bean plant. Also, all the cherry tomatoes (and a lot of the plants' leaves) were eaten, and the tops of all the pepper plants got bitten off. Also, all the squash in the corner got destroyed by those boring bugs except for one kind of sickly looking plant that the bugs don't really seem to be interested in.

Last night, the deer took off all the top leaves of the mutant squash. The yellow squash itself remained unharmed. Seems it's time for me to put out some more soap.

Sad news mode: off. Happy news mode: on. Just in time for potatoes!

After two years of that potato plant growing in that tire, these potatoes have emerged. Or, well, I dug them up with that little trowel in the corner of the picture. Did you know that rolly-pollies eat potatoes? There were a lot of them inside of that eaten one.

Also...

And a tent stake. Not sure how that got in with the potatoes, but whatever.

Also, I forgot to mention, neither deer nor bugs have touched the okra. I'd put up a picture of the creepy black and yellow flower one plant has put out, but that would mean taking pictures of the rest of the garden again, and I'm just not motivated to do that right now.

To date, I've harvested two and a half acorn squash (one was kind of tiny, but the vine died, so...) some tomatoes, green peppers, banana peppers, maybe cherry peppers, a couple of beans, those couple of potatoes, and (as of today) that mystery squash. Not too bad, when I think about it.

By the way, the compost is coming along, even though it looks like a huge mess in this picture:

I think a possum's been snagging most of the kitchen scraps I throw in there, even though I try to bury them pretty well. (Uncle Stephen, I'm seriously considering your compost suggestion with the barrels. As soon as I get some barrels, I'll give it a shot.) Today I went out and weighed the edges of the tarp down a little better, so hopefully it'll be a little harder for the critters to get in after stuff. (But considering the persistence of possums, my hopes aren't exactly reaching any new heights.)

I still need to get under the porch and do a little more wasp-destroying/tree-uprooting. I also probably need to weedwhack along the edges again. Can't have the deer-ravaged remains of the garden looking too scraggly.

Anyways, here's to hoping the next post will be full of tales of cantaloupe, heaps of harvested beans, and a resurgence of tomatoes. Cross your fingers for the okra too-- so far so good on that front.