November is Ending

All of our complaints regarding the miserable month of November wil have to end this last day of the month. This last week has been a mixed bag with respect to weather with some very cold days and nights, and one very warm balmy day with temperatures of 17C. That day was spent digging a rhododendron for a Christmas present, and stowing the tag-end stray plants, plus a bit if clean-up in the big perennial bed at the front. I had a Birthday this week, so found that day to be quite busy with some nice socializing. My friend Pauline gave me a gorgeous garden book...."The Oxford Companion to the Garden ". It will need quite a lot of perusing as the winter progresses. I harvested some ripened hot peppers that had been in the sunporch since the early fall. Hopefully they are ripe enought to dry properly. We grew these hot peppers in planters, so they can be brought in as summer ends. 'Hole Mole' was a new one this year. They are a Pasila type and produce long green peppers that ripen to a sort of chocolate colour. They are a very mellow "hot". I am not quite sure how to best use them. Our other favourite "hot" is 'Ring of Fire', which is quite hot, and produces loads of small to medium, pointy peppers that ripen a brilliant red. When properly ripe, they dry beautifully. Most years we grew a few Ancho pepppers but they didn't seem to get planted this years. They are another rather mellow pepper, but have a very nice "depth of flavour". There were a few puny little Jalapenos, but they were stray plants that didn't do very well. Bill has been finishing his seed collecting(mostly!), and has many cleaned. We have a slightly more minimal approach to seeds this year, but there still seem to be more than enough. Our online seed list is mostly up to date.