Grasshoppers, Hot Peppers and Church Windows

  My hikes about the property serve up some pretty interesting finds at times.  I never know if a critter will be lurking in the palmettos, a new plant will surprise me with a bloom or if the rains will give me another treasure from long ago.  This afternoon was much the same.  Surprises abounded with each turn of the hike.  Grasshoppers, hot peppers and church windows do not have much in common except here on the Bayou.  The common factor?  They (or portions of them) are all found in the back yard.  

  First and foremost, were the grasshoppers.  The Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers are all about business this time of year.  They have just about given up munching the garden and have changed goals to mating and egg-laying.  Hundreds upon hundreds of the adult grasshoppers are out and about the hillside.  Each female has dozens of suitors and eventually will lay about a bazillion eggs.  Early spring finds me doing the familiar "Grasshopper Stomp" (the local dance of gardeners) and each summer finds me doing the "Twist and Turn" as I grind the critters to a pulp.  These critters are aggravating as they literally have enough babies to cover the hillside each spring.  The ground looks like it is covered with a black carpet...a black, wiggly carpet.  So, that said, I try to get rid of as many as possible when they are in the adult phase.

  While smacking grasshoppers, I discovered that my forgotten jalapeno peppers were making more peppers than I can possibly use. They are loaded!  I say forgotten because I truly have not cared for the plants since sticking them in the back garden.  Word of advice...never sow an entire packet of hot pepper seeds unless you truly plan on making hot sauce.  These things never die, never quit making peppers and will be loaded with dozens of peppers at any given time.  I suppose canning hot peppers will be on the agenda soon.

  The discovery of hot peppers led me to realize that the garden was also weedy.  Handfuls of weeds were yanked and tossed the wayside.  While tossing one particularly large wad of weeds out of the garden, a glint of blue caught my eye.  The recent downpours had washed the ground to be clean, white sand.  (This sand was washed in on a hurricanes tidal surge.)  The blue was striking against the white sand so I needed to investigate.  Yep, blue glass.  Blue stained glass that had come in with that beach sand.  When Hurricane Katrina demolished everything across the Bay, it swept it all over to our side.  A good bit of the debris wound up on our property.  As near as I can tell, the shards of stained glass came from windows of churches that were demolished in Biloxi. I gathered a dozen or so pieces of glass from the sand this afternoon.  For the most part, these were blues, greens and purples. Over the past twelve years now (since the storm), I have been collecting the shards of colored glass.  Buckets full of the colorful pieces are stored in hopes that some beautiful craft project will become of them.  It seems to be almost a sacrilege to dispose of them.  Surely some use can be made from the once thing of beauty.  I just have to get creative here.

  So my hike turned into quite the intriguing venture.  Now I have to squish grasshoppers, can hot peppers and be creative enough to recycle some beautiful glass into a treasured piece. It can be done...it can be done.