by Lynda Chitwood

Created on: February 21, 2009   Last Updated: March 01, 2009

The Family Jewels

I lost my husband.
Again. I looked around our small apartment for him, and he was nowhere to be found. Hard to lose a big man in a little apartment, but gone he was! I finally remembered to look out on the front porch, and of course he's there. Squatting down in front of the pepper plants as though they are a holy shrine. He had counted the habaneros yesterday, and the day before that, but there he was again, taking inventory.

"Jeez, these plants are just going crazy!"

What he'd said was true; it's just that it was becoming a litany for him. Every few days he'd come into the kitchen, his large hands full of not just habaneros, but serranos, cayennes, and fiery little Thai chilies as well. He'd hold out his hands like a prospector with a million-dollar find. "Gold! Look, we found gold!"

The love of my life has another love, and that is for hot peppers. I am a fiery red-head, so his obsession for the hottest chili pepper is understandable. For him, though, the hotter the better and his favorite pastime is making salsa and attempting to kill people with it. During football season, he'd show up to practice with a tub of the nuclear stuff, and then tempt, wheedle or shame the other coaches into trying it. If they fell on the ground, gasping for air, he'd consider the day a success. He may become the first person in history to be accused of Homicide by Habanero.

Living in Southern California means we have an extended growing season, living in an apartment means we have to be creative with container gardening. On our tiny patio, alongside the peppers, we grow Italian Basil and some succulents. The patio doubles as our front porch, with only a juniper hedge as a barrier, making my mini-farm accessible to all. I have a beautiful strawberry plant that has taken over an oak half-barrel. It wasn't grown to be an ornamental plant, but I have managed to eat only 3 or 4 actual berries; the other 4 or 5 berries that the plant produced were stolen.
Raccoons, possums, skunks and neighborhood children. All are suspect, I trust no one!

With so little room, only the most prolific plants make the cut. In fact, my husband refused to have any plants that weren't edible, but I convinced him that the hanging plants don't take up space. A poblano pepper didn't make it, snow peas and a peppermint saw the dumpster.

The strawberry's days are numbered.

This was the third summer we'd grown peppers and had never had such success. The crop was amazing; we were drying peppers, smoking

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