I love growing my own vegetable garden. I spend many fulfilling hours outside every summer, tending to my plants, nurturing my soil, and babying things along, with the birds for music and a basket full of delicious organic food to show for it each day.

Except for that one year. That one year, my garden was a flop.

Eaten by deer, killed by the heat

It's pretty embarrassing to admit on my own website that my garden did not do diddly squat that year. I am normally pretty good at growing food (or just extraordinarily lucky) but a few years back circumstances beyond my control threw up one obstacle after another.  First of all, we moved on July 1. I had started my garden in containers, earlier in the summer, and then transplanted them into my lovely new fenced garden full of raised beds.

Only, the fences weren't high enough, and unbeknownst to me, I had set up a deer buffet with a low hurdle. Garden #1, GONE. Decimated. Wiped out. And I didn't even get venison in retribution.

So, I went and got some new plants and put them in. Better late than never. I deer-proofed and nurtured my soil and paid top dollar for plants that were a bit more advanced since by now it was the first week of July.

And then a heatwave hit the day after I transplanted them. 107 degrees. Most of the plants withered immediately and no amount of TLC would bring them back.