I had thought that in September I would be writing about and posting pictures of my green and lush garden winding down. But I was wrong. Instead, I’m talking about snow and freezing temperatures. Calgary was hit with a winter storm in the summer. It sounds ridiculous saying it, but snow is not unheard of at this time of year in Alberta, but a storm like this is fairly uncommon. The snow started falling in parts of the city on Monday morning but didn’t hit my area until early Monday afternoon. And it wasn’t bad – there were a few moans around the office about snowflakes but nothing was sticking. Then Monday night things started to stick. See my last post here. On Tuesday morning there was a bit of snow on the ground, but it wasn’t piling up on the roads or sidewalks. But it didn’t stop and by Wednesday morning, it was wet and heavy and still coming down. On my drive to work, I saw large mature trees splitting down the middle and limbs falling off from the weight of the snow and landing on the sidewalks and streets. Several street lights were out and many people were without power and/or water. We were fortunate that we only lost power for a couple of brief periods at home and we don’t have any mature leafy trees on or near our property (there are some old spruce trees on the street but those were not affected). Apparently the total snowfall tally in the city over the last few days was 35cm. It was the perfect weather to start knitting again and we did pull out the wool blankets which I love so so much. And apparently the weather is supposed to go back to normal September weather starting this weekend and early next week, so I’ll be able to not complain about snow for hopefully a few weeks.

The aftermath in my garden, September 11, 2014 – snow has already fallen from my neighbor’s tree and melted off the shed roof and fence

And now to pretend that the snow didn’t happen and I’m happily harvesting vegetables from the garden.

I don’t remember what the deciding factors of purchasing pepper seeds were for me a few years ago (I’ve said it before – goldfish brain). Now that I have a few varieties of peppers under my belt I know it will be heat. But I’m not so convinced that this was a factor before. Looking back on my old stash of seeds, it seems the hottest seeds I’d purchased were jalapeno – weaklings in the hot pepper world. I’m going to assume that I chose the pasilla bajio based on the look of it on the package because I certainly didn’t buy it for the heat. The pasilla bajio is a really beautiful pepper – about 6 or so inches long and very dark green/slightly brown. I would be interested in drying some of these because they are supposed to be a lovely dark brown when dried and apparently make a really tasty powder, which is typically used for mole sauce.

And it was one of the earlier peppers to appear in my greenhouse, which is a plus in my books. I started all of my pepper plants inside the house in February. I’m actually thinking I will start them earlier this coming year. They seemed to do really well under the lights indoors and did not grow big or leggy like a lot of other plants do when started indoors. The only reason for starting them earlier than February would be to get peppers harvested sooner. Some of my peppers were ready in early August, but most have been ripening late August and into September. And I even have a feeling that some varieties may even hold out until later, like my habanero.

The taste was very mild and flavorful with a hint of smokiness. I would actually argue that I didn’t find there to be any heat at all and that makes sense since this pepper is rated 1,000 – 2,000 on the scoville scale. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good though – you just need to know going in that it isn’t a pepper you grow for heat. Since I only had 3 peppers, I made spiced chicken and pepper rajas, recipe from Bon Appetit. It was good, but next time I would actually add in a little hot pepper for some heat and serve it with some sour cream and shredded cheese (basically just a fajita without the soft tortilla). The recipe calls for pablano peppers but they are on the same level heat-wise as the pasillo bajio so I didn’t think the recipe police would mind too much.

Because I would like to experiment with making my own powdered spices, I will grow this pepper again. Plus, it is just so pretty.

Seeds purchased from Botanical Interests.