Reflections - Too Hot for Me

Poblano Pepper

My husband is a hot pepper enthusiast. I’m completely, utterly anti-hot peppers. Spence relishes the zest they add to his breakfasts and dinners. But cut or cooked in the same room with me, hot peppers burn my lips, sting my eyes, and make me cough. Even wearing garden gloves, I dare not touch the fiery fruits.

Some mornings, stretching in a yoga sun salutation at the road side of the loft, the evil essence of hot peppers floats up from the kitchen at the woods side of the first floor. Coughing, without even detecting a hint of spicy fragrance, I shout, “TURN ON THE FAN!” The fan buzzes, I cough a few more times, and keep stretching.

Spence doesn’t just buy hot peppers. He grows the beasts in his garden.

Planting the seeds in trays over heating mats on basement shelves isn’t the problem. The seedlings don’t trigger a reaction from me. Once he’s transplanted the sturdy young plants into the garden, I steer clear.

“You could weed the peppers,” he says with a wistful look when I strap on knee pads and grab a trowel.

“I need to weed the asparagus first,” I lie.

Later, if I head to the garden with a picking basket, he says, “Peppers are ready to pick.”

“No time. The pole beans.”

The tease and deflection doesn’t fool either of us. And all runs comfortably until it’s time to preserve his harvest for winter.

Jalapeno Seedlings

When Spence slices hot peppers for freezing or concocts pickled peppers to can in a water bath, spicy fragrance and heavy essence saturate our log house. Even if every window is open and all the house fans blow at top speed, I flee.

For my health and his sanity, Spence schedules pepper processing while I swim laps in Meadville, attend three hour Pennwriters meetings in Erie, or visit friends in Cleveland. I’m thankful he does.

Once our son Charlie visited while I was away. Spence brought the canning kettle to a boil. He inserted mason jars filled with pickled peppers. The water bubbled, and a jar burst in the bath.

“The house filled with a hot pepper cloud,” Charlie told me later. “It was horrible. No amount of window opening would get the concentration back down. We had to leave.”

COVID-19 put a stop to swimming, in-person writing meetings, and Cleveland trips. Spence got creative. He shoved the box of tick spray and suntan lotion to one side of his porch desk and the bag of garden ties to the other. Brushing away scattered clumps of garden soil, he set out a cutting board and—snap, snap, snap—sliced. As soon as I headed for the garden, he hustled to parboil the peppers, spread them on trays, and shove them into the freezer before I returned.

Hungarian Yellow Wax

This February he started four kinds of hot peppers in the basement. Looking innocent, their thread-slender stems and cute little leaves reach for the light. Yet the devils will grow and concentrate their heat. We’ll have to dance around each other’s schedules because Spence is a hot pepper enthusiast. I’m completely, utterly anti-hot peppers. After more than five decades of marriage, we can make this work.

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