Here are five things to do in the garden:

Thyme. Thyme is the most cold-hardy herb and is therefore suitable for the fall and winter garden. Even if it should die back in a hard freeze, it will regrow when the weather warms. Thyme is divided between creeping and upright types. Creeping thyme is more useful as a garden ornamental, trailing out of containers or bordering planter boxes, and is often promoted as for filling in gaps between pavers. However, the heat of our interior valleys requires that it be protected from hot afternoon sun. When it comes to culinary use, upright thyme is more practical since it gives you more foliage for your purposes and may also be used as a pollinator plant due its attraction to bees. Plant thyme and tomato plants together since their bloom times coincide, and bumble bees drawn by the former will pollinate the latter. Fresh thyme is more aromatic than the dried version. When it comes to cooking, dried thyme is for slow cooking of meat dishes, while fresh thyme may be added when cooking is almost done if its more pronounced flavor is desired. With thyme and other herbs as well, the rule for making tea is that steeping three sprigs of fresh herb yields the same flavorful result as one sprig of dried herb. There are 300 species of thyme, a Mediterranean plant, and more than two dozen of them, along with another dozen varieties, are available at mountainvalleygrowers.com, the website of a mail-order nursery in Northern California that has more varieties of herbs available than any other nursery I have found. The aromas found among thymes include lemon, lime, mint, lavender, juniper, caraway, and orange balsam.

Fruits. Can you imagine a fruit with the taste and consistency of peanut butter? Well, it actually exists. The peanut butter tree (Bunchosia grandulifera/argentea), growing no more than 20 feet tall, is native to Chile and can grow in Southern California when afforded frost protection. A peanut butter fruit, orange to red when ripe, is about the size of an olive. The reason you don’t see it in the market is because it is highly perishable and must be eaten soon after harvest. Peanut butter trees are available through Internet vendors. On Etsy.com, I found someone offering baby trees, 6-8 inches tall in four-inch pots, for $22 a piece.

Vegetables. Radicchio looks a lot like red cabbage — although green varieties are also widely grown — except it is in the chicory group of vegetables, which belong to the daisy family and bear blue flowers. This group includes endive and escarole, which are annuals, even while radicchio is technically a perennial, although it will probably not give you its telltale head of leaves after its first year in the ground. However, by harvesting its head just above the root crown, you may get another smaller head the same season. Radicchio leaves are bitter but turn sweet after being grilled.

Flowers. One of the best November bloomers is star clusters (Pentas lanceolata), which develops into a 4-by-4-foot shrub. Its star-shaped flowers are available in red, pink, lilac and white. Pentas have above-average water needs, so a layer of mulch around them, two to three inches thick, will cut down on the frequency of irrigation. True to their name, star clusters produce inflorescences of many small five-pointed stars; “penta” meaning five in Greek. I would say star clusters are a must for the fall flower garden, as opposed to the summer garden, when they tend to burn up on very hot days.

For the protection of young trees that could be damaged by frost, utilize a pop-up tent that provides a shield from freezing temperatures. Widely available through Internet vendors, you can find such tents up to three feet tall and wide for around $20. This tent can double as a heat protector when summer temperatures soar into the 90s and the foliage and bark of many plants, especially tropicals, are susceptible to heat scald. Burn from excessive cold or heat is of particular concern for young trees.