I'm A Pretty Hot Guy and Here's Why

          My Wednesday theme usually deals with people--interviews and people features--and like I've done the past couple of weeks I'm going to talk some more about me.  Let's face it--I'm a hot guy. I'm not bragging to get you ladies all worked up or anything like that.  It's just that I'm hot.  And today I'm going to tell you why I'm so hot.

It's all the hot and spicy food I like to eat!!!!

         At my age I should be careful--my stomach just doesn't handle the spicy foods like it used to.  My wife warns me about it all the time and worries when she sees me at Sutha Thai Restaurant in Downey with my hair (what little I have left) drenched as sweat pours from my head and runs down the back of my neck, and  my face and ears turn a bright shade of red.  I love it, but I pay later.  The old stomach just doesn't handle the hot stuff like it used to but I can't give it up either.

         But now to get to the real point of today's post.  You see I'm not a horticulturist, or a gardener, or a farmer, or anything like that, so I was hoping that someone out there might be able to tell me what we've got growing in our backyard.  This is a plant that is dear to my heart--it's like my child.  It is a hot pepper, I do know that because I risked my life eating one. Why it could have been a berry of instantaneous death or something horrible, but it was just hot.  It was kind of good, but it was hot.  My question now is what kind of pepper is it?

        First, let me give you the history of this pepper plant.  That's not it to the left, but this is where I originally had it before I had to move it to the back yard.  When we first moved here this little square of soil was planted with some kind of ground cover plant--don't know what it was, it was just put there by the original landscapers.  Well, this groundcover all died and the spot turned into just some dirt and a few weeds.  Then one day I saw this tiny little plant that looked greener, shinier, and healthier than anything else. It was growing over to the left up against the pavement of the driveway.  It struck me that there was something special about this plant and I took a liking to it.  So I dug up everything else in this plot of earth, moved my new little plant to the center, and covered the rest of the plot with green colored gravel.  The little plant began to flourish.  This was in spring of 2005.

           To spruce up the decor of the front yard I bought these little kids in a swing over at WalMart and placed it behind the plant so it looked like they were looking at the pretty little green plant.  Eventually the plant grew taller so  I moved the kids in front of the plant so it looked like a tree growing behind them. The plant continued to grow with branches extending to the driveway and the entranceway to our front door. My wife said it needed to be moved and I knew that she was right. In late summer of 2006 I dug the plant up and moved it to our back yard.

         

          When we first moved into our house in 1997 there was nothing in the back yard but a bunch of dirt which eventually began sprouting a healthy crop of weeds.  I quickly decided that this would not do and decided to start a small farm in my back yard.  Now as I have said I am no farmer and my crop was basically a fiasco.  I did manage a fair amount of very strange-looking skinny cucumbers which I dined on nearly nightly in the summer of 1999, but everything else did not produce and died.  Soon after that I came to the conclusion that this is Los Angeles and no place for a farm, so we covered the backyard with concrete except for a small strip against the back wall that was left in case anyone ever wanted to plant something.

        In June of 2005, my sister Joni was visiting and decided to replant some little houseplants that my wife had received as a gift.  They were going to die anyway so Joni replanted them in our little strip of land and they actually survived.  That's where I replanted my plant-child from the front yard-- right in the center of the strip between the other transplants.  However, my replant began to wilt and lost its leaves.  I figured the shock of the transplant was too much and the plant had died.  I left the barren skeleton to stand through winter.

         In Spring of 2007 I began to see tiny sprouts of green appear on the branches.  Then after the leaves had appeared, tiny white flowers began to blossom.  I was thrilled.  What is this plant?  I wondered. Then in midsummer I was amazed to see the tiny red orbs appear where the blossoms had been.  The plant was strong and healthy and growing bigger by the day.  At our annual family Fourth of July party at our house in 2008, my nephew-in-law tasted one.  I was afraid, but he assured me it was just a hot pepper.  I tried one.  It was a hot pepper, a very hot pepper, but a tasty hot pepper.  The plant had hundreds of them.  I began using them in cooking occasionally, but they were very hot so I didn't use them often.  To the above right is what the plant looks like now.  It's difficult to tell by the picture but it's about 6 feet tall.

 

   

      

         Since 2007 two more of these have sprouted in the ground nearby.   I transplanted them so they would be evenly spaced in the earthen strip along the wall.  So far they both seem to be doing well and are sprouting peppers of their own.  You can see the two offspring to the left.  The one top is the newest and it stands about 18 inches tall.  The one below is a couple of years old and is nearly 3 feet tall.

           At the bottom of the page are close-ups of the peppers and the leaves.  I am hoping that someone who knows peppers can identify them for me.  They are hotter than jalapenos, but maybe less hot than a habanero.  In the past I have tasted some that reminded me of the flavor of peppers that are used to make Tabasco sauce.  Although today when I tasted one it almost had the flavor of a bell pepper, albeit an extremely hot one.     

          If any body knows what these are please let me know.  Any suggestions on how I could use them?  If anyone lives near Pico Rivera you're welcome to have some cause I haven't been eating them.  They're too hot and I'm hot enough from all the other hot stuff I eat.