Hot Peppers!

  Our weather has been absolutely perfect, if you ask me.  It warms nicely during the day but the nighttime sees temperatures near freezing.  I love it!  While that might be so, I am not too sure that my garden shares my sentiments.  So, feeling sorry for the bell pepper plants, I was nice and covered them with blankets.  So far, this has worked.  I am still picking bell peppers in mid January!  At this time of year, I am delighted to have any fresh produce so the pepper plants are treated with kid gloves, so to speak.  

  I was upstairs doing a bit of painting near the window on the south side.  The warm sunshine was streaming through the glass making it the perfect spot to paint yet take advantage of a gorgeous view.  This window overlooks the garden and beyond that...the Bayou and Bay.  It makes for quicker work if I am happy while doing it.  I made the remark to Son (who was cutting trim boards for the windows) that I needed to remove the blankets covering the peppers.  "Tonight is probably going to be the last of cold nights, so the blankets can be stored back in the greenhouse," I reminded him.  At that very moment, he pointed out at the garden. "You have hot peppers," he said.  This made me giggle.  Sure enough, though, the peppers were probably quite warm just not "hot" as usually used in connection with peppers.  They were warm from having a "heater" near them! 

  Some time after I let Ms. Nycto, the Bayou Princess Cat, out for the morning, she had decided that the blanket covering the peppers was her bed.  She had snuggled up to take a nap in the warm sunshine.  While this is all fine and dandy for the cat, I suppose my pepper plants were feeling a tad squished! Ms. Nycto is quite a hefty princess!  Oh well, it could be worse, I suppose.  She could have been smashing the spinach!