You Are What You Reap

It's about time to close up shop on the front yard garden. This summer we had great success with cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. We were giving the stuff away, we had so many vegetables. The same cannot be said for the sunflower we planted in the corner of one of the raised boxes we maintained with mild vigilance. Somehow the regular watering that seemed to make everything else grow so very impressively didn't seem to matter to the wilting stalk that started with so much yellowy promise.
We also tried to coax more than a single fruit from our green pepper plant. There was an initial burst that seemed to suggest that we might have salads to be proud of which resulted in that aforementioned lone pepper. And it had been gnawed upon by creatures who seemed only vaguely interested since they left the back half of the pepper, the part we could see initially, but the back half was a toothy mass of discarded rodent snack.
In the back forty (yard), we planted parsley and four strawberry plants. The first was for garnish and breath freshening. The second was for shortcake. Or a reason to bake shortcake, but you know what I mean. The parsley flourished, while the disregard ladled on the green pepper by furry pests was not felt by the strawberries. After surrendering a month and a half's yield to the trash pandas, I rigged up a hanging pot that took them out of the path of the dessert vermin.
Now it's November, and the harvest is just about complete. Since the tomato plant was a leftover from last year that seemed to awaken in spring, we might still have a few of those to drop into our store bought salads. The cucumber vines are spent and tired, and there are two butternut squashes that seem about ready to be rescued from their spot on the ground.
And the biggest green leafy surprise was the chard my wife rescued from the Ace Hardware dumpster. For a month, we ignored it. Then we decided that as long as we were planting a garden we might as well try to resurrect it. Lo and behold, it came charging back, leaving us with great leafy goodness that was chopped up and fried down into a brown paste that my wife seemed to enjoy quite a lot. And that rogue tomato plant? I'm thinking I might go ahead and string some Christmas lights on it.