So, I’m not sure what the weather has been like where you live, but here, it’s been pretty crazy. Crazy as in we have been wearing short sleeve shirts and sandals in November.

And, that means our garden was still chugging along.

We’d lost a few things, though. The peas bit the bullet a month or so ago. And the acorn squash gave up the fight in September.

The zucchini put in a good effort to survive, but we’d only had a few zucchini from them. I’m not sure if the blooms weren’t getting pollinated because all the bees were gone for the year, or if they were just putting all their energy into living with nothing left for producing fruit. Either way, it’s been an interesting experiment to plant them so late in the season. Squash borers weren’t an issue, but we didn’t get much fruit. I just can’t win I guess.

Most things still looked pretty good, though.

The okra was going along okay, but we weren’t getting too many okra, and I really only planted it for the blooms anyway, and I can never catch them open, darn it.

Though we lost a few plants, we gained a few others. Honestly, I think I planted these carrots in August. And they sprouted in October. Ha. So, there’s probably no chance they’ll be big enough to really do much with when we have to harvest then. But, since we’ve had such a warm fall, they’ve had at least a small chance.

We actually cleaned everything out this weekend though because it was warm and we had time…and because it wasn’t doing THAT well anyway. I mean, it is the middle of November, after all, and things had certainly seen better days.

The peppers probably would have kept going for another week or so. There were so many little ones out there when we pulled them out.

Which reminds me. I have several batches of pepper jelly to make again. Like, several double batches. And probably another batch of tomato juice. And a few more batches of pasta sauce and salsa. Sheesh. Have I mentioned I’m super busy these days?

Still, I’m very thankful for the bounty our garden gave us this year. This is what we picked over the last few weeks. Crazy.

And I’m trying to ripen some of the green tomatoes we ended up with.

So, for now, it’s pretty empty out there. Ready for snow I guess.

This is also your friendly reminder to wash your tomato cages with bleach water in the fall to get rid of any fungus or mildew that might be on them after a long growing season. You’ll thank me later.

However, one bad thing about having such a warm fall is that there are still tons of bugs. We have flies in our house and oak mites in our yard. Poor Wyatt got so many bites last week while raking leaves, and I was covered after planting my tulips, too. I was sort of holding out for the warm weather to continue for our garden’s sake, but now that it’s cleaned up, I’m ready for a good hard frost.

Of course, I’ll be sad to have to start bundling up for jogs with Will in the stroller, but at least I won’t come home with five new bites each time. Good grief.

Anyway, that’s a little garden update for you for November. I’m ready to take a break from that project for awhile, but I am already excited about Will being old enough to help next year. “Help” by getting muddy and playing in the dirt, probably. But, he’ll also love picking ripe produce. He liked picking berries and tomatoes this year, but we had a hard time convincing him to only pick the red ones.

So, now that it’s almost Thanksgiving and we’re still enjoying sunshine and sandals, are you on team warm or team winter?