Well, I'll Be!

Blight and fungus on the tomatoes. 

Cucumber beetles and squash bugs.

Bunnies taking up residence and eating every leaf off the pepper and jalapeno plants.

Unbearably non-stop 100+ degree days that caused us to retreat to the cool shelter of the house.

And then a miracle. 
Just when I had written off the garden for the year as a semi-disaster, the heat broke and I ventured out to find something amazing.

Today's harvest!

 

The Roma plants were laden down with ripe fruit.  There's pasta sauce in my future this weekend, I think.  And my first ripe Sugary Baby watermelon and J.'s first cabbage.

Not only had the garden survived, but it was regenerating.

Those green beans that I had left to dry so I could harvest for seed were actually re-growing and had new blooms on them.

The cucumbers didn't succumb to the cuke beetles and were climbing like mad up the trellis.  Bees were busily flitting between the vines' flowers, their legs laden with pollen.  Will we have cukes this year after all?

Then my gaze turns to the tomatoes that I thought were dead or would be shortly.  All have a ton of new growth on them in the past few days.

Sharing their cages are the watermelon vines.  I found this little guy hanging on for dear life.  I'll have to take some old panty hose out there and build a sling for it.  I hate that the tomato cage is in the way in this picture and I have some others that are better, but I love this one the best because I actually captured an ant busy at his work.  Can you see him?

Click to biggify!

From the old comes the new.  And so it is in my garden.

If you like this post, you might also want to check out this week's Green Day, Farm Fresh Friday, Farmgirl Friday, Ole Saturday HomesteadingTrading Post and Eat. Make. Grow hops.