vegetables are not my strong suit

I am not a terrible gardener.  In fact, if I left vegetables off the agenda, I'd be a halfway decent gardener.  I've grown perennial flowers, annual flowers, and all kinds of herbs (I'm good at herbs and basil) for many many years, but things go amiss when I attempt to grow other food.  (I did, years ago, have a stellar strawberry bed, but critters now make that next to impossible, and I can grow green onions, but then a three year old could grow green onions. Oh, and rhubarb, I have rhubarb, which is also an easy perennial.)  This year I really thought things would be different with my attempts at vegetables because I was going to take it more seriously.  I was going to give it some effort.  I keep picturing my backyard as this tiny self-sufficient plot of wonderful veggies, but I've been, once again, sorely disappointed.  I did manage to produce a tiny bit of lettuce, arugula, and lots of kale.  Kale seems to be hardy enough for even me not to screw up. The lettuce and arugula, however, went from bite-sized to bitter in the blink of an eye, so we in no way got enough to eat fresh salads every night.  The beets never turned into beets, but we ate some as beet greens, so they were not a total loss.  The radishes were tiny and hot as firecrackers, even though I'd gotten a really early jump on all of this stuff in the Spring, because I know to do that in order to (ostensibly) avoid bitter greens and burning hot radishes.  The zucchini plant looks mostly dead.  I mean, seriously, people consider zucchini a near-menace they have so many, and I can't grow a single one.  The watermelon plants are tiny and lethargic and look like they will not possibly produce anything before frost.  I've eaten two very tiny peppers off the sweet red pepper plant--it actually came with a couple of baby peppers already on it--but it looks like it's given up on producing any more.  The jalapenos are prospering somewhat, but honestly, how many jalapenos do we really need?  The cherry tomato is going nuts, so that's rather a win.  The regular tomato has issues with some kind of vermin I can't find on the plant, and I'm putting it in the loss column. All in all, if we were relying on my food-raising skills, we would starve.


But man oh man, let me tell you what I CAN grow.  Or rather, what some mysterious unseen power in the universe can grow.  And that is a pumpkin.  I didn't plant any kind of pumpkin, but these monstrous things grew from the compost I'd created over the past year (as all good gardeners should) and spread around all over the garden.  These pumpkin vines are absolute phenoms.  One of the vines is thirty feet long with leaves a foot wide, and a (single, so far) pumpkin fattening up like a prize winner.  Another humongous vine is harboring a white pumpkin.  I must've bought both of these last Halloween.  There are four (at least) other squash vines taking over the garden and I'm not sure what any of those are yet, but probably more pumpkins.  I don't know if all pumpkins are the kind you eat?  I'm not above trying one of them. But otherwise, I've labored away all Spring and Summer for some nice door decorations come Fall.