The "I'm Back!" Garden Update

I've been absent from the blog for about a week. Absent from the garden, too. Sadly, nope, we were not on vacation. We've had a series of unfortunate events that have pushed blogging to the back burner. Where to start?

4th of July week, metro Detroit got hit with a series of nasty nasty storms. They knocked our power out TWICE. The first time, only for a few hours. The second time-it was for a few DAYS. Then the power came back. Here's some photo proof of just how hot it was:

You can read the whole skinny on being without power at this post from last week.

Ok, so great. Power's back on, life is good. Until I required 2 trips to Urgent Care and 2 trips to the ER in 4 days. The short story is I had a kidney stone that we thought was my back going out, I was drugged heavily, then the pain moved to my front, then I was drugged heavily, then I couldn't walk due to pain in my leg. I was once again drugged heavily and sent home w/a pulled groin from walking funny due to the kidney stone pain. Fun stuff.

The best part of all of this? (and I use the word "best" in a semi-sarcastic way) is that my best friend was ALSO at the SAME hospital the SAME day as I was for.....KIDNEY PROBLEMS. I can't make this stuff up. She was much sicker than I, and Brad wheeled me upstairs to her room once I was done with ER trip #1. And being hopped up on morphine, I thought it would be fun to take a photo together. Of us. In the same hospital. For kidney problems. Evidently, when you share a brain with someone for 25+ years, you end up sharing body ailments, too. Forgive me, BFF Cher, for this lovely photo of the two of us:

Aren't we cute with our matching purple glasses, matching stoned looks on our faces and oh yeah, matching HOSPITAL BRACELETS?!!

So now we've had power outages, Mom (ahem, that's me!) in the hospital, and oh, what's the third thing? Ya know, things happen in 3's? Oh yeah...our Uverse went out. Uverse is our cable/phone/internet. After 4 days of no phone/cable/internet, AT&T sent us a new gateway and we're up and running. Life is back to normal. 

*cue the dramatic music*

Except for my garden. My garden, well, it was not anyone's priority while I was down. I should give props to hubby Brad for at least running the sprinkler on it a couple of times. That really saved it. I have to say that for about 5 days straight, I JUST DIDN'T CARE about my garden. I know-blasphemy, right? Hopped up on some lovely pain meds I just didn't care. So here's a few shots of the heck that broke loose in the garden because I wasn't there babying it every day. 

1. My lettuce died. Well, it was over 100 and nobody watered it, so I'm not too shocked. 

2. A ginormous woodchuck has taken up residence under our shed. That hole is about a foot wide! We have used those smoke bomb things TWICE and he keeps coming back. 

3. The darn woodchuck dug his way under my garden fence and ate.all.of.my.broccoli. All of it! If you look, he left a few bits on this one.

4. Can you see how the woodchuck has topped ALL of my brocc/cauli/brussel sprouts? He ate all the big top leaves. Left the cabbages alone. Hmm.

5. Japanese beetles defoliated my basil. As they had already nailed my carrots, I guess basil was next. AGH!

6. The one head of broccoli that the woodchuck didn't consume is a funny yellow color. Do I harvest it & hope for side shoots?

7. We don't water our lawn. My corner of SE Michigan has received just a scant 10% of it's typical rainfall to date. The green areas of lawn? Yeah. That's clover.

Now for the good things:

1. Cantaloupes!  I've found 9 so far!!

2. Watermelons! I've found 10 so far!

3. HoneyDew! I've found 3 so far and they are not as far along as I would think. But the foliage smells DIVINE!

4. Bryce's corn is now over 6 feet tall--and, there's corn! 7 ears so far!

4a. Here's a peek at one ear, doing it's corn thing.

5. Lastly, we have the cantaloupe plant that is out front--it has produced 1 cantaloupe! This was an experiment b/c the soil in that spot hasn't been amended with anything but decomposing wood chips.

Oh, and my harvest this week? Yep. Three cute little banana peppers. They were weighed and chopped and stuck in the freezer for later.

I hope next week's Garden Harvest & Update will be a bit less dramatic and have a whole lot more HARVEST goin' on!!

oh, and ps: MY RAINBARRELS ARE FULL!!!! Too bad I'm not allowed to lift my 2 gal watering can just yet. sigh.

Linking up to Daphne's Dandelions.