Garden Loot!

I realize I haven't done a garden update for awhile and, to be quite honest, it's because the garden doesn't have the same vigor and aliveness as it did in the beginning.  Texas heat is here in full force and it makes my plants visibly sad.  I've been double watering almost every night to literally water 'em back life, but some of them just can't get enough.  I had an infestation of flea beetles about a week ago, but I looked them up online and their lifespan is very short, so they are long gone now.  I mention them because my zucchini and yellow squash plants are a bit worn away at the lower stem where it meets the soil.  I'm not sure if I should blame the beetles or the fact that I let multiple plants grow out of one place without narrowing it down to one.  Either way, I'm not sure how much longer they will survive.  Also, thanks to the summer heat, I got a bunch of starter cucumbers that concluded their existence by shriveling up and dying.  Then, I got really excited about my tomatillo and tomato blooms until the plants got upset and dropped them.

But, in spite of all my losses, I had a few triumphs this week.  While watering the other night, I moved zucchini leaves to discover this monster:

Yes, I'm a nerd and put a ruler beside it for scale.  Can you believe my sad little garden produced an eight inch zucchini?!  I think it did it just to cheer me up after all the other disappointments.  Then, today when I got home from work, I knew I had some bush beans that I guessed were about ready to be picked (I really have no idea if they were ready of not, I guess I'll find out when I try to eat under grown bush beans), so I was out there picking away.  All of a sudden I noticed an alien-looking crooked cucumber that was definitely not there yesterday.  This is today's harvest:

I'm honestly not sure if that cucumber is safe to eat, it looks pretty wild.  And, to tell you the truth, I don't even like cucumbers.  It just happened to come in the seed pack I bought for this garden.  I have you know, I will try it because I grew it.  Here's hoping it doesn't suck!