We planted some peppers; to our shock, they turned out to be very hot. What we didn't know, not until hot-pepper-lover John Magee informed us by passing on this link to an article in the New York Times, was that tolerance for “pepper heat” was a sign of smarts. That John should have discovered this does not surprise us. He tolerates with smiling pleasure what causes ordinary mortals to writhe on the floor...and his smarts are, well, legendary! The article's last line, by the way, is this:
Take heart, chili heads. It's not dumb to eat the fire, it’s a sign of high intelligence.
The wild chestnuts, which my mother told me as a child were poisonous but which, I learned in old age, might not be (or is that just malicious urban rumor?), are there to lend a color contrast only. I picked them on a recent walk as a sign of the arrival of autumn.
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