Over achievers and those who will never make it

I suppose with that title you were wondering what this post would be about - probably not what you are thinking.

This is an update on my garden. While I never seemed to get the bark on it or the flagstone set, I did get plants in and it took off. This has been a great year for our gardens. Our watermelon (my son's experiment this year) has done fair. We have harvested one watermelon (not ripe enough - but still sweet) and have 2 more we hope to get to fruition before the winter. My peppers did fabulously and have been producing and producing. They are the over achievers in my garden. I have a serious amount of roasting that needs to happen but have been putting that off too. These are the plants and this is just one of the harvests from these plants. I have four times that amount picked and need to harvest one more time before the first hard freeze (coming soon I'm afraid). It has been a wonderful feeling harvesting the peppers from my labor. The rest of the gardens have done well too. We've had lots of herbs, berries, tomatoes, and peppers. So why do I have these zucchini plant pictures added in with all the peppers? Those are the ones who will never make it. We planted zucchini seeds last year with only one plant popping up and never flowering. We dug up the area last winter and then this spring I dumped all the old soil/sod from the new garden on top of the "zucchini" area and neglected it. It has summered with rotting sod and weeds. I wasn't planning on doing anything with it until later this fall (another project). However, about 3 weeks ago 2 zucchini plants popped up and began flowering like crazy. No new seeds, no water, no new soil, nothing. Very strange. If this had been more like 2 months ago, we'd have zucchini coming out of our ears but as it is getting cold, these flowers are not going to become zucchini (but they are trying). Nope, those seeds will never make it. So for now, I'm picking the last of the tomatoes, herbs and peppers and planning for the next garden, next summer. Boy did it seem to go fast.

Happy Fall.