Last Harvest

Herewith a collage that Brigitte calls her “last harvest.” That isn't strictly true. Plenty of tomatoes and all kinds of fragrant herbs remain outside yet to be fetched, and they will be.

To go around clockwise, the green leaves are part of the pepper plant to show how they are wilting. Lying on top of them is the husk of an expired cone flower, an immigrant (but I hasten to add a legal immigrant) from Philipsburg, Mo., some flowers that came from Rex a couple of years ago and have flourished here ever since. Tomatoes (red). Tomatoes (yellow). A close look at the bigger one shows that somebody has taken a little bite out of it; that person was a squirrel. Around here we don't draw sharp distinctions between people with and without much conversation. Finally the hot pepper, whom (we also think of plants as people) visitors to this site have already met. In the center, in a kind of place of honor, is our pumpkin, actually an acorn squash, officially Cucurbita pepo. The great plant that brought it forth has also been featured before.

The two chestnuts managed to get on the paper towel on their own. They came from a walk I took the other day. Their pleasing shine was irresistible. They're here to to give an accent to our display...

The Hot Ones for the Smart Ones

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.