If at first you don't succeed try try again

I was admiring my beans in my garden the other day, and thinking about this saying.  If at first you don't succeed try try again.  There's so many variables when gardening it's incredibly important to not give up.  When something doesn't work rather than think "I failed" try to figure out what went wrong.  Sometimes it's bad weather, or something you  can't, or couldn't have done anything about. Sometimes it's the wrong variety, or to much water, or not enough.  The soil needs amending.  And, and , and...
The reason the beans made me think of this is  I used to "try" to grow beans. I tried a few different kinds.  They would start ok, then mostly peter out, then get a mass of aphids in August.  I would get beans , it wasn't a complete fail, but it was very disappointing.  Last year I tried yard long beans (snake beans, asparagus beans ) Wow it's the bean for me.  It takes a long time to produce, so I planted French beans in the spring. They grew fast and produced fast, but when the heat hit they were goners.  In comes the yard long beans. They don't seem to mind the heat, they just keep producing.  It's late August and no aphids ( I hate to even say that, I'm tempting fate.).  It's tooooo hot, it's dry, but we are still eating beans.
My tomatoes did much better this year.  Is it a better year for tomatoes, or is it because I discovered not all tomatoes do well in the hot dry weather?  I don't know why, but I thought either you can grow tomatoes or you can't. Wrong, there are so many varieties of tomatoes and they produce better in certain areas.  Did I find the tomato I'm thrilled with, and always want to grow?  Not really. I'm still looking for the varieties that work for my area ( I hope someday to landrace some tomatoes and create my own lovely tomato, but I'm not there yet)
I was sure I would never manage comfrey.  I'm not humiliating myself by going into the amount of comfrey root and crowns  I have killed trying to get it to grow.  But finally I have found I can grow common comfrey from seed.  It doesn't need babying, and grows very well.  ( it doesn't reseed itself, like everyone fears)
I never had much luck with watermelon, when I was trying to grow it in my raised beds.  A  couple years ago I put some in the ground, and it grew so well, and produced a lot of wonderful huge watermelon.  Now the gophers are so bad I can't plant anything directly into the ground, and I'm back to square one.  There's a way, I know it, it just takes time,  and experimenting.
I'm not an expert by any means.  But I love gardening. There's nothing like planting a little seed, and ending up eating something amazing.  I just love it.  I think it's so important for new gardeners to understand that you can do everything right and end up with a fail, ( I usually  say it's not a fail because you gained knowledge you didn't have  before, but I'm using it for lack of a better word) or do everything wrong and get a win. As long as you enjoy it, and keep trying, then in my eyes you're a successful gardener.

Thank you. I needed this.

Yesterday I was at the garden watching my sun scorched plants and it was very apaling to see that nothing that I planted still survives. Nothing except some saplings, which half of them looked at me like saying: why did you put us in this misery?
The only ones not accusing me were some moringas, a jujube, a few carobs and mulberries. The wild fennel is insultingly happy.

There's not much I can do to improve the lives of the others, they want water and shade that I still cannot provide, I don't have so many resources or spare time. Damn this hot and long draught.

I should not despair. There are still plants that are holding ground, plants that should be rewarded by letting them propagate. I am not very good at propagating, but that's the only thing I can currently do that makes sense.

This year has not been a good year for gardening or at least here in the Hill Country of Texas.

We went to the local Farmers' Market for the first time and there was not one single piece of produce.

When we told our daughter of this she said that her garden died before it even got started due to the heat.

So I feel the moral of this is to try a fall garden or wait till next spring.

Thank you for your post Jen. I think you make several very important points. I wonder how many beginner gardeners give up in the first year because they don't get the wonderful results they are promised? There are so many factors that work against getting a good crop - as well as pests, seasonal variation in weather, lack of experience on how deep a particular seed needs and how much water a plant wants. The seeds that are commonly available have been mainly developed for farmers and supemarkets that want something rather different from a crop than the average back garden grower, so the odds are rather stacked against getting it right first time.
People also don't tend to publish their failures, but I'm trying to work out how to actually get a crop of peas (rather than the mice and birds harvesting them all or gnawing through the stems before they ripen). My barley didn't germinate well (I think the birds had most of the seed) and I actually saw a wee mousie climbing up and eating my oats yesterday! It's OK to fail, the important thing is to learn from what went wrong and work out a way around it for next time. I think we have really missed the generational passing on of experiences so asking a (apparently) successful neighbouring gardener for advice might be the next best thing.

my experience with beans (both types) was exactly the same. I eventually did get aphids (and the mildew they bring with them here), but only very late in the season. I will totally plant both types of beans again!
Your climate is very similar to mine, Jen so my suggestion for you for NEXT year is to try urizunmame or winged beans, Baker Creek sold them last year and I planted them, they were sort of "act 3" of my bean show. Like the long beans they take a loooooong time to get started but no pests went after them and they were beautiful and delish, and very different.

I've been gardening here in this space now for 10 years. This year was the first time I've had daikon do well. Some things like sweet potatoes and scarlet runner beans and even okra some years just refuse to participate, and then other years have me drowning in produce. it's just hard to tell, and requires mad flexibility: plans b, c, d, e, the whole way down.