It may have been a few weeks later than I wanted, but the garden is finally tidied up for winter. Hopefully all the seedlings don’t mind the cooler weather. I know for sure they don’t mind the rain.

I’m wondering what the longevity of the passion fruit will end up being. It’s been such a huge grower, and it bloomed for months. I expect it’ll start again after this round of fruit is done. I hope it’s up for lots of years of fruiting!

The pomegranates are all done for the season, but not for the birds. I love watching them break into the open ones and eat the seeds.

I’m pretty excited to see how the clary sage is thriving in this space too. I’ve never grown it before, but I’m totally charmed by their humping qualities. It grows so differently from the other sages I have – but it’s still a salvia. It hasn’t bloomed for me yet, but maybe next spring!

I’m trying out root vegetable seeds in this bed too. My raised beds have drip irrigation, so it was a challenge to get those root veggie seeds sprouted in there. Then – of course – it rains a bunch. But we’ll see how they do in the real ground instead! I’ve got some carrots, wasabi radishes, and turnips growing.

Yet again, my Brussels Sprouts are beset by these white aphids, without a ladybug in sight. The ladybugs are crazy about the black aphids that hit the okra and the fava beans, but these white ones they just don’t seem to care about. The yellow rumped warblers, on the other hand, love them. They come through to eat big nests out of anywhere they can find them. They do a great job of chowing down bugs in my garden in the winter. When the birds have done a sloppy job, I try to remember to come through the garden with the hose to blast off the rest of the aphids.

Jordan did a little yard work too – cleaning out the side yard to prep for chickens. We’re trying to kill the grass a little over this way before the chickens move in. I have some plans for planting chicken-healthy herbs like lemongrass, mint, lavender, and rosemary. I’ll probably also grow them some other veggies to eat and destroy over there.

You can’t quite see it, but there’s an onion bed in there somewhere. I guess it’s time to dig this back out and try again to beat back the Bermuda grass, an endless task. I have a silage tarp that I might try here to win against the grass – but I also have some garlic that needs to get into the ground yesterday. So, perhaps it’s just going to be another dig-and-suppress operation.

We also picked up some chairs from Home Depot to go around the firepit (finally). It turns out we never had fires because there was nowhere to sit! The perfect end to a yard work day.