Behnke's Nurseries in Beltsville....Chile Cookoff

Fall is a fun season at a Garden Center. The displays are extravagant and speak somehow to our visceral vegetable memories of abundance and harvest. And our childhood memories of Halloween. Mums are a curious ritual. We pull out perfectly good annuals that would have, in most cases outlasted the chrysanthemums we replace them with, and a few weeks late the mums are bouquets gone bad. It's possible to deadhead mums, but who does that? Winter is coming; perhaps the mum's deaths are symbolic. Oh well, we still put in a few mums every year.

Ornamental Kale and Cabbages are beautiful and occasionally stay beautiful well into the winter.

I was one of a large panel of judges who sampled 15 different chiles and offered up our subjective ratings. I liked them all, but was glad I had brought double bandannas.