Happy September!

Okay, so maybe it’s happy mid-September, but the sentiment remains the same. I love this time of year. Even with all the back to school and back to activities craziness, there’s a definite shift from spending the summer running from place to place to hunkering down and hanging home a bit more.

Our summer was filled with family, friends, vacations and soaking up whatever sun we could when we weren’t soaking from all the rain.

Confession time. Even with all that rain, the garden this year was a complete bust. Between the late start, the invasion of groundhogs, rabbits and birds nibbling everything, to the crazy amount of rain that continually splits open my tomatoes, and the scorching sun that killed all the zucchini plants in a matter of hours, it was a rough go this summer.

This was one of the better picks from the garden. At least it all tasted great!

We had already scaled back a lot of things since we knew planting in almost June was already setting us off on the wrong foot. And the wildlife has forced me to compost over half of the veggies we are getting because there are so many nibbles being sampled. Lest I feel totally defeated, I asked my neighbor, who has a much larger garden that is not fenced in, how his garden has fared. His response? “I’m feeding all the wildlife in the area.” The deer have been eating his corn and the groundhogs and rabbits are feasting at his house, too.

This was less than a week after weeding, on one of the less rainy weeks. One thing I learned, groundhogs do not care for Hungarian hot peppers, but will strip the bell pepper plants clean weekly.

But so it goes. Again, I’ve learned a lot of lessons this season. First, I need a better way to control the weeds. I typically use landscape fabric to create pathways, but the grass and weeds overrun them. Even weeding a couple hours a week barely put a dent in taming the weeds. Seriously, the weeds would grow a foot high in a week with all the rain. If only the veggie plants did the same!

I still have some eggplant, tomato and pepper plants going strong so I’m trying to salvage what I can. As for everything else, I’m trying to clear away the overgrown and dead and prep for next season.

On the bright side, I have a good reason to visit the farmer’s markets around us more often.