Cloudy summer

Summer so far has been pretty rainy and grey. But still hot and humid so the vegetables are growing as expected. My expectations are pretty low though because the soil of my garden has been lawn for many many years and lacks quality. I hope it gets better year by year as I add mulch and manure and stuff to it.
Have not been to the forest in a couple of weeks as it has been raining a lot and I am waiting for chipper parts to arrive.
Oh, I forgot to mention, after the shredder machine company got my extremely polite mail complaining about the low quality of their chipper, they sent me not an apology but a list of parts that I would need to order and pay for to bring the machine back to working shape. Along with that they listed a lot of excuses that bamboo is hard and their machine can actually not handle it although they clearly mentioned it as chippable by their machine when they sold it. As summary they pointed out that the machine had broken down due to wrongful usage and hence reparation would be my responsibility. Thanks as always for your business, we wait for your order, they concluded.
That kinda brought my blood to boil and I thought to myself no more Mr. nice guy. I wrote a very polite answer in which I calmly and respectfully brought to their attention that they have in fact sold me a subpar product, used false advertising and that it had broken even though I followed the instructions. I wrote that I would be disappointed if their attitude was to blame their faults on customers, and that I was now starting to think about filing a complaint with the authorities and get all of my spent money back.
Quickly after that I got a small mail with a very short apology, saying that they understood the situation, and they would accept the burden of the parts needed to repair the machine. Please wait until we arrange and ship the parts to you. Thanks as always for your patronage, they said.
So I am waiting for those parts to arrive to fix the chipper and give it one more go...
Aaaanyway, this post is just to bring you up to date with what the garden looks like.
First off, a couple of examples of what I mean with low expectations on produce...

The cornless corn

The corn in the backyard are getting bigger taller and thicker everyday but I have still not seen a single cob on them... is it a timing problem?

Zucchini jungle

The zucchini are very good at producing lots of leafs and flowers but when it comes to actual zucchini, well they get up to about 10 cm and start rotting. I have so far only been able to harvest 2 tiny ones, maybe 20 cm.

More zucchini

In the middle of the zucchini, a few tomato seeds have survived from last year and grown to really slim plants with a couple of tiny tomatoes hanging from them. Still green as you can see in the picture...
The tomatoes I actually planted for this year are doing better.

growing tall and pride

I have been diligent in removing weeds around them and staking up their branches. Also kept bamboo chip mulch in good shape under them. So now I can see some nice size tomatoes coming out.

Please bugs don't eat these

The string beans at the garden entrance and also inside the garden have already started to produce yummy looking results.

string beans

And the chickens are loving all this green scenery just beyond their run. Inside the run they eat anything green in their sight so it looks like a desert.

chickens eating breakfast

The other morning I was removing weeds in the backyard when I noticed carrot leafs sticking out. I pulled it up and found this cute and sweet carrot.

Can't B more natural than this

For a while I thought the melons and watermelons are doomed but now it seems they have made a comeback.

watermelons

melons

And also the passion fruit is adapting to its trellis...

I guide it along the bars every now and then

I build the trellis as the plant grows

And finally, I think I planted too many saplings, and now it is getting pretty crowded. Especially the mulberry tree/bush is just spreading out and bullying the others. I will be pruning it a lot this winter to get it into shape. Now it just looks wild.
Also the walnut trees are starting to look like trees. They are now taller than me with real branches.

The trees..