Fail - Gardening edition

I was only sorta kidding last week when I talked about placing bets on how long our garden would survive. I saw the neighbor's cat pee in it once, but didn't need to get my old lady broom to scare any pesty neighbors away.

Apparently I should have been a bit more serious. We have the worst luck. No matter when we plant - early or late - we always end up with this.

This used to be my butternut squash plant. It was going to supply me with enough squash puree to figure out how to sneakily healthify my family with every meal.

Now, not so much.

See, we had a crazy cold spring. So Hubby and I waited to plant. And waited. And then we got busy, so we shoe-horned in a trip to the greenhouse and a planting afternoon. It was June, so I figured we were past the cool nights.

We certainly were... it hit 98 the next 2 days. All the water and wishful thinking in the world couldn't prevent this.

That used to be basil. A few plants did survive, so on goes my growing obsession with fresh basil in/on EVERYTHING. But I had 4? 6? to start so I will be severely hampered.

Then there's the peppers...

Hubby loves to make fresh salsa. Hubby's coworkers and our friends love Hubby to make fresh salsa. We haven't used peppers from our own garden since the first year we lived in the house. One year it's too cold, one too hot, one there was a fungus... you get the idea. Hubby picked this bell pepper plant specifically because it had the beginnings of a pepper and SURELY it could survive.

He picked four kinds of pepper plants. They all look like that.

But there will always be beans... Ah green beans, you always save the day. I think we could forget to water or weed or do anything useful and we would still be buried.

Green bean puree? Green bean salsa, anyone?