The Remains of the Feast

Well, now that two nights of hard freezes have declared the 2009 gardening season officially dead, I'm wading out tomorrow to begin fall cleanup in earnest. After I remove the black mush formerly known as dahlias, tomatoes and peppers, I will no doubt be puzzing until my puzzler is sore over the small pepper I grew that I believed to be 'Yum Yum Gold'. This was supposed to be, I thought, a miniature sweet pepper, perfectly sized for salads and snacking. Well let me tell you - this pepper had a definite bite and more than a little heat to it. I tried it at various color stages. Just gold - vaguely nippy. Orange - a bit spicier, but still tolerable. So, thought I, let's let one go to red. After all, sweet peppers are at their sweetest when they're red, right? Well, you would think so. And you would be wrong. At red, these particular peppers damn near bit your tongue off and gave you a raspberry. So the possibilities are as follows: I misunderstood/misinterpreted the catalog description; the funky growing conditions this year caused some abnormality or recessive gene or some damn thing to kick in; or (my guess) some hot pepper seeds found their way into that packet. Either way, I believe that 'Yum Yum Gold' is definitely off the menu for 2010!