There are two kinds of people in the world--white light people and multi-colored light people. Okay and maybe those who decorate with a single, non-white color. I'm going to include them with the colored light people because I think they secretly want to be colored light people, but are intimidated by the trash talk from the white light people who claim decorating with white lights is classier than using multi-colored lights. Piffle, I say. Yes, twinkly fairy lights are pretty, but I can see them any time I drive past a restaurant with a patio. What's special about that? For Christmas, bring on the color. Yes, I am a multi-colored Christmas light person. Not only that, but my tree lights twinkle. Individually. At night, I like to stare at the random shadows the lights make on the ceiling. If it's really quiet, I can hear a faint plinking sound as the bimetallic strips flex in the bulbs. To me, that's the sound of Christmas.
Which is it for you--white lights or colored lights?
Our peppers have kept growing longer than I expected, especially since I nearly killed them with a homemade concoction of soapy water and hot pepper juice. I'd found a recipe calling for cayenne pepper, but I had all these peppers that broke off from a ristra I carried home from Albuquerque earlier this year. (Ristras--those long, bushy strings of dried peppers--do not travel well.) So I soaked the peppers in water and mixed that with liquid soap and sprayed all my plants. Two days later, they dropped all their leaves. I thought I'd killed my entire garden--except for the bugs. Miraculously, the plants survived. The bottom couple of feet of all the pepper and tomato plants have no leaves, but they put out new growth. They're top heavy, so I've had to support them and in September, they got a second wind and dozens of new blooms appeared. In the picture are sweet salad peppers, Gypsy peppers, and a red bell pepper. There are jalapenos, but not in the photo. They're kept segregated ever since I accidently made a really, really, really hot spaghetti sauce in the summer.
