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Well, it's September and fall is around the corner. I should be enjoying the fruits of my labor and the bounty of my garden and have tomatoes falling out of my armpits but alas, I apparently suck at gardening.

Broccoli fields forever. No broccoli though.

Check that. I suck at gardening most things. Apparently only the very tip of my thumb appears to be green. Despite having 14(!) tomato plants, I have yet to see a red tomato and my lush broccoli patch is sincerely lacking in the producing broccoli department. My pumpkins and squash are gay and the few female flowers that have sprouted have gone unloved and quickly withered and died. I even tried to sex them up myself but half of them didn't even bother to open before heading to the great compost heap in the sky. They didn't have much hopes for their love chances it seems. Of course, now all the vines have caught powdery mildew again so they are not going to be of this yard for much longer anyways. However, one of my pollinating experiments may have taken and I now have golfball sized lump hanging off one of the least moldy vines. It could also be a tumor. I'm not holding my breath.

My great, green hope.

I don't think my gardening failures are entirely my fault. The summer has been hot and dry so everything grew too fast and went to seed and it's possible that a lot of my plants are not getting the best sunlight. That is out of my control too, as a renter, I can't exactly go ripping out bushes and lawn to make sure my cucumbers get enough direct sunlight. Nooooo, that prime real estate goes to an old Christmas tree and some bushes that small like skeet. The composition of the soil here is also working against me. It is very dense, black clay here. Thanks, glaciers. It's got terrible aeration and despite the fact that I pitchforked the shit out my garden beds in the spring, all the dirt is back to being hard-packed pottery material. this is especially bad for the root veggies that I have failed to grow like radishes, parsnips, onions and potatoes. I even added store bought soil for the potatoes to increase my chances but all I got for my money and effort was a potato harvest so pitiful, even my Irish great-grandmother would feel bad for me. Oh, and a sore ass from digging them up. I am not even going to bother eating the three good ones. I have shoved them (and their sad dwarf onion friends) into a paper bag to spend the winter in my basement thinking about how they should maybe try harder next year.

Note: There are no actual potatoes beneath this mess.

Oh and the goddamned vermin. I have a small strawberry patch the has been stripped bare all summer by something and the stupid chipmunks refuse to learn their lesson and insist on taking a bit out of each and every one of the peppers on one jalepenos plant. And the squirrels. I hate them. They make me say the bad words in front of short people.  In the spring they dug up almost everything I had put in pots and planters and one enterprising douchesquireels was such a tremendous asshole, he went ahead and planted his own crops. No really.

This is corn. I did not plant it.

That's not to say I didn't grow anything. I am apparently VERY GOOD at growing peppers. We were swimming in jalapenos by early spring and would have been at the giving them away to strangers point a few weeks ago if Bruce hadn't accidentally murdered three of my plants.

Cross breeds. Habeneros that got frisky with the jalepenos next pot over.

I also have a few others kinds of hot pepper, including two over achieving habanero plants, bell peppers, bananaish peppper and some Hungarian sweet something or others. My pepper cup doth overflow. My peppers have done so well, from the habanero plants alone, I have made two kinds of hot pepper jam, one hot sauce and something the recipe called a hot relish but is more of a savory pepper suspension.

Call me Jam Master L

For whatever reason, I can also grow kale rather successfully which makes total sense because my children refuse to eat it. These are people who eat the tips off of markers. But not kale. Not even after it's been greased and salted.

Sad, unloved kale.

Since I'm dumb and I love pointless endeavors, of course I am going to try again next year. With different plants and better planning. And more peppers because they validate me. And because I know deep in my heart, regardless of whatever else I screw up, I will never completely fail because I still have my herbs. Garden protip: Even if you kill plastic flowers, you can grow herbs. They are pretty much weeds that just happen to taste good.