A recent visit to my cousin's beautiful suburban home during Thanksgiving weekend gave me cause to wonder if I've done enough in my garden.

My cousin's husband has cilantro (Coriandum sativum) patches everywhere that a flower border would be. Instead of grass, he has cilantro growing everywhere. His cilantro looked fabulous in the dark, rainy day. I'm jealous.

And I think about my little planter of cilantro. I barely harvest from it because there's not a lot of it. Meanwhile, as parting gifts, cousin Dave's up in arms, clipping away bouquets of cilantro for everyone. When he was done, I could barely tell he's clipped anything at all; he also sent us home with a cup full of cilantro seeds (also known as coriander seeds). I'm grateful, and a little shamed.

Why is this important to me? Maybe because I'm a gardener who always has something to do in the garden.

All year I'm constantly feeding the worms in my worm bins, adding more yard clippings to the big compost bin; I started converting the front yard sprinklers to drip irrigation; I finished the short retaining wall in the backyard; I built a potting bench from old fence boards; the list goes on...

But with cold weather comes less work for the garden, couple that with rain, and one is stuck indoors—with nothing to do. That is probably the core to my gardening insecurity. I would have to slow down and read seed catalogs and gardening books; spend time with family and enjoy the fruits of my labor. There are the pots of winter greens - Plantago minutina, from the six-pack I bought from Morningsun Herb Farm in late summer, the beet greens, perennial kale (Brassica oleracea 'Pentland Brig'), Brussels sprouts, lettuce (mesclun mix).

And since I'm slowing down, I'll wait until later to winter prune my one tree rose; side dress my plants with alfalfa meal/pellets and winterize the frost-tender citrus trees.

But for those who wish to keep working in the garden in the cold and wet garden, there's still time for planting cool season crops, those that grow best and produce the best quality when the average temperatures are 55 deg F to 75 deg F and are usually tolerant of slight frost.

Plants in this group include root crops such as: beets, carrots, parsnips, radishes and turnips; stems such as asparagus and white potato; leafy crops such as cabbage, celery, lettuce, onion, and spinach and plants whose immature flower parts we eat, such as broccoli.

For the ornamentally-inclined gardeners, there are Hydrangea plants to prune.

Summer and fall flowering plants should be pruned in the winter or dormant season because the flowers form on growth produced in the same growing season.

There are always weeds ready take over the winter garden - sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus), Filaree, mallows (Malva parviflora) — if pulled before they go to seed, they can go in the compost pile.

And mulch, mulch, mulch.

As for me, I'll be busy making cilantro pesto and trying out new recipes with my coriander seeds.  If there are seeds left, I may plant some in the spring.