Here’s my gringo method: Get some anaheim green chiles (see December 11th post), and a nail and some fishing line. After you let the chile stem start to wilt a little bit (3-4 days) you poke holes in the stems with the nail, and string them up like catfish on a stringer. Oh yeah, you’ll need a good clunky knot in one end of the fishing line. Hang ‘em up, and about every 2-3 days you push the chiles down towards the knot at the end. Here’s what they look like after two weeks — all red, but not very wrinkly yet.

Remember the scene in Long Hot Summer where Jody starts the fire in the horse barn, and is saying, without conviction, “I’m not sorry… I’m not sorry.” Well, that could be me as far as my frost damaged garden is concerned. My front-porch, under-the-eaves thermometer read 33.8 degrees one early morning last week. I had told myself I didn’t want plants that needed too much pampering, but now that I have a nasturtium sprout, and a bell pepper plant, both the worse for wear I am really sorry I didn’t protect them. Sometimes you want to let nature take its course, but you can’t expect a frost sensitive plant to evolve protection on the fly. So, we’ll start over again with those plants… in preparation for the long hot summer to come.

One never took the time to savour the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. -Paul Bowles, in The Sheltering Sky

I had a frost about two weeks ago, so I picked the chilis off the frost burned plant. Some are right in the middle of turning from green to red, so it’s Christmas-y. I plan to string them onto a rudimentary ristra so look for a picture one of these days that shows the finished project.

I have had these plants for a year. It took me awhile to figure out that NO water wasn’t the answer. I eventuallly tried watering them only if it was a weekend, and with other distractions I figure I was watering about 3 times a month.

It isn’t time to do this, not in any of the books anyway, to start some miniature bell pepper seeds, and some tomato seeds, and how ’bout some nasturtiums? I placed them in starter mix, and plan to supply some heat, and see what kind of plants I can set out on Feb. 1st. Not that Feb 1st is the right day to do that either. Maybe I have a microclimate, right here in Tempe!?! Stay tuned…