My big end of season SIGH!

This is the hard part! My summer garden is all done and I miss it. I'm down to and cooking up the last of my veggies.

Even though I watered every day during the scorching heat I didn't produce enough to store. My 2 cherry trees produced 1 cherry each. My nectarine tree was infected by some gross bacteria that made the leaves look like they were burnt and the fruit was ruined by some weird worm things. My 30 strawberry plants produced about 30 strawberries, the chipmonks got under the netting and swiped most of those. Japanese beetles destroyed the leaves on my baby fruit trees. Squash vine borers destroyed my squash early in the season even though I diligently dug them out of the stems. Crickets got word that I had a garden and came through like a plague of locusts. There where ittly bitty flying white bugs and black bugs hovering like clouds of demons chomping away at everything. Whew! I'm tired. Everything that survived was yummy though.

My fall garden of greens, carrots, radishes, and chard are growing and taking care of themselves and I get to eat fresh for a little bit longer.
My garlic for next season has been planted. And I'm cleaning up and putting stuff away. (hate this part!)

My little nectarine tree was torn apart during a huge storm this summer but the 2 feet of trunk that survived is growing leaves like crazy. I'm worried about it. It's growing like its spring time. The leaves are green instead of turning brown. I have no idea what to do about it.

I've made a few resolutions while I sit on my hands until it's time to start my seedlings for next summer.
*Learn to be orderly. My garden was a big ole sprawling mess of greenery and insects. (loved every inch of it!)
*Learn how to compost without stinking up the house and having to handling gross slimey stuff that I end up tossing out. Fertilizer is expensive and I will have tons of leaves by the end of fall. I will not put them at the curb for pick up.
*Stop trying to grow everything! I lost a lot of time and money planting things that just weren't suited for my location or the media that I tried to grow it in. If I grow in pots again, I need to get suitable pots with a bit of insulation and water reservoirs. Those flimsy black pots from the garden center were not a good choice.
*Don't read and drool over every seed catalog and order seeds just because the colors make me happy. Unless someone gifts me with some farmland, there is no way I can grow every type of seed that I have.

Okay I think I'm done sighing. I might as well go ahead and thumb through this seed catalog that I'm sitting on.