Gardening failure!

My garden has turned into almost a complete failure. Things are growing, but I'm getting no veggies! The broccoli sprouts start to form, but then they spread out and turn into flowers. Sigh. Turns out I planted way too late, so it's too hot now for the broccoli and cauliflower to produce anything. So, I'm going to have to wait until it cools off a bit and plant again... probably September. Oh well, it was my first try.

OH, speaking of gardening. I have a small trash can outside that I use for all the uneaten vegetable parts (old vegetables, leaves from the cauliflower, etc.) for composting. It's been breaking down really well. I've put a ton of stuff in it, and it's broken down to 4" of dirt-like compost. So a couple days ago, we had a fairly large rain storm and Eric and I went outside into the carport to watch. I looked over toward the compost bin and noticed a few worm-like bugs around it... and noticed more... and more... and more... They looked like leeches, and they were everywhere. There must have been 50 around the bin and on the patio. They were black and about an inch and a half long. I took a look inside the bin, and it was literally writhing with larvae, some that looked like the leeches and some that looked like maggots. Kind of like in "The Lost Boys" when the guy looked down into his Chinese container and saw nothing but squirming bugs. It was seriously creepy. There were/are probably around 500 larvae. I'm not exaggerating. (Eric took a look first and he goes, "There are millions. MILLIONS." And he was dead serious, lol.)

I had just bought a bug killer for all the spider eggs around the house (yet another shudder--WTF is with all the damn BUGS around here?!?!?!), so we started spraying the larvae. It didn't seem to be working, so I looked up what they could possibly be. It turns out they're black solder fly larvae, and that they're very beneficial for gardens, and people actually BUY these larvae from the internet! I checked the larvae out the next morning, and most of them are dead now. Sigh. I really should have checked this out rather than use the "kill first, ask questions later" method. Still, that many larvae means that many flies, and I'm not particularly thrilled about adding more flying pests around this house. I'm convinced we have so many bugs because of all the trees. Our property will have just enough trees to provide some shade. Screw this forest crap.