Failure

Remember when I enthusiastically wrote about canning cream and pudding for our trip?  That didn't work out.  I'd noticed that they were separating, and then I moved the jars and found the lids unsealed.  Something had been growing in there.  When we poured them out they smelled BAD.  The whole house stunk. 

Canning failures are a big deal.  The stuff in those jars was probably deadly poisonous.  I should have looked it up before doing canning experiments.  Lesson learned. 

Our sweet corn was a complete bust.  We only planted one variety and the whole crop failed.  This was an experiment with the "three sisters:" corn, beans, and squash.  The beans and squash seem to be doing well, but they're all flopped on the ground and the corn didn't even make it three feet tall. 

The short plants set some corn cobs, they're not enough to bother with.

This is soil that really needed fertilizer and the corn showed it.  I've read about the problem of monoculture at the large industrial scale (only growing one variety), and here we've had an example on the small scale.  It will be a year without sweet corn.

Like all failures, these are better thought of as God's teaching moments.  Our job is to learn.