We're all confused

I mean really confused.  A few times in the past week, water droplets started falling out of the sky and landing all around us.  Last Saturday, in fact, the water fell out of the sky so fast that it was creating puddles and lakes around us.

What is this plague that is happening?  Why is the sky spitting upon us so?

In all seriousness, the rain has been good.  The backyard is greening up.

Now I'm looking at what we need to do to plant some fall garden veggies out there.

Spring Onions

Our Texas sweet onions aren't ready to harvest yet, but we did need to thin them out. So here's a few Spring onions to throw on the grill with tonight's flank steak.

Turnips!

One of the best "crops" that we've planted in the garden in recent years are purple-top turnips.  Ordinarily, we plant them in the fall and they supply us with a steady stream of turnip greens throughout the winter.  Sometimes, though, I not only forget to thin them out, but I also neglect pulling them up.  So, as we've now hit Spring, it's time to clear out the planting beds and as part of this, the turnips had to go.  I threw my fist in there for reference as I had them sitting outside on top of the smoker, but it still doesn't give full weight to the almost-bowling-ball size of a couple of these giants.  Probably way too much turnip there.

Anyway, after clearing the turnips and chunking the largest ones into the trash, we picked and cleaned up several of the more moderately sized turnips.  Peeled them, then Meredith diced and boiled them to mix with some potatoes in mashers (we froze about half of them as this was still a LOT of turnips).

Onward to Spring plants and planting!  It's the best time for gardens!

Sunflowers

So I had this great idea to plant sunflower seeds every two weeks from March until July, so I would have staggered growth and sunflowers blooming for a long cycle, but nature beat me to the punch and these remnants from last year's seeds came up first. We'll see if the rest make it.
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Tomatoes

First this year - a couple of Cherokee Purples and a couple Rutger's Select (ripening). I always try to pick before they "vine ripen" so the pests don't get them. They'll ripen on my counter just fine.
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Irises

Despite some damage from the freeze last month, the irises are still blooming.
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More Eggplants

So I have decided that eggplants and bell peppers are a great garden-type vegetable investment.  Here we are, middle of November, and all of those plants are still cranking out vegetables.  On top of that, they are big, healthy plants that take up a good space in the garden.  I pulled 5 peppers for a King Ranch Chicken Casserole and also grabbed a BIG eggplant off the vine this morning, and still left about 5 eggplants and a ton of peppers still out there.  With a freeze looming soon, I have no doubts that these will soon disappear.  Still, it's been a nice long run this year.  Those (and my prolific jalapeno plant) are definitely on the list for next year.