Cantaloupe Frustration

I think I've mentioned how much I love cantaloupes.  When I was in high school, I described happiness as "a sweet treat on a hot summer day, like cantaloupe".  I really meant it.  My creative writing teacher thought I was original and, well, creative because I described cantaloupe in ways that normal kids described popsicles or ice cream, but in all honesty, I really delight in ripe, perfect cantaloupes, perferably from the area I where I was raised.
 So every summer, I try to get my hands on those orange globes, and usually I manage to grow a few that taste pretty good.  This year, I was excited to have four growing in the garden.  Unfortunately, something (deer?  raccoon?) also was excited that I had cantaloupes growing.  It ate three of them, plus the pumpkin.  Large bites out of the top of the not-even-close-to-ripe melons look like disater to me.  I do have one small cantaloupe left, and I covered it with newspaper to try to keep the animal away, but honestly, I don't know what that will do as far as it ripening correctly.  And the darn animal may well find it anyway.  The big garden has had so many challenges this year, but this pretty well just tops it off for me.  I'm making new plans for next year's gardens, completely different than ever before.  Maybe things will turn out better for me.

Some of my plants look quite healthy, though, including the lemon melons on the front porch.  Nathaniel specifically requested that I grow these for him, but I didn't want them cross-pollenating with the cantaloupes, so I have them in a big pot on the front porch (see above).   The peppers are also doing well, including these sweet chocolate ones:

We've eaten a few of the golden sunshine peppers while they were green, but it takes forever for the peppers to change color, so we plan on waiting for the color change on most of them.  Still, there are lots of peppers, so we should have a good harvest of them.  Also on the positive side is that we have tons of tomatoes, although most are still green, waiting for the summer heat to come back and make them red.  We have gotten a few ripe ones, though, and they are delicious.  Also, the golden crescent beans are both prolific and delicious, so we will plant more of those next year.