2010 Drought

This year's veggie garden was almost a complete failure due to the drought and insects. The bright side I'm trying to keep in mind is that what did survive to reproduce should be some of the toughest - the selective forces were relatively brutal. This picture shows the lawn a week ago. Keep in mind this hasn't been mowed for 3 1/2 months and hasn't really grown at all.
Then the squash bug population exploded and after completely killing ALL of the already stunted pumpkins and squashes, they started attacking the watermelons and cucumbers. So, I went ahead and harvested the small (softball size) watermelons to at least save seeds for next year.

Below are a few of the tough ones:

Watermelons of mixed ancestry ('Moon and Stars' and 5 or 6 others)

And cucumbers - F2 from 'Straight 8' X 'Lemon'

At the risk of sounding like whining... I am really amazed that even these few made it through the terrible trials. I'll post a few more of the "2010 successes" (any seed at all) as I get pictures together.