Drone Surveillance

 Today has been the longest day in recorded history.  Sunday, man, and rainy, and glum, the Biker and I just sitting here reading with a music channel playing....GAAAH I hate being bored.

Yesterday we had a party, just a couple of people, and as we were sitting outside someone kept buzzing us with a drone, one of the expensive ones with a movable camera, and we obliged the operator by holding up our beers and flipping it off.  This of course brought the damn thing back over another seven times, to record the old people misbehaving.  We'll be having a party next weekend, and there has been talk of wrist rockets.  Watch this space. (Shit, everybody else is.)

My garden has absolutely exploded with color.  I live in the middle of a floral Gay Pride flag.  This is what my grandmothers generation called 'Flaming June', the first burst of real color all over the garden, while the early risers sink back and let the roses and other showstoppers take the stage.

I planted the last three 'brought in' plants last week - three little perennial flowers (Two lobelia x speciosas Red Rocket and one Anise Hyssop) in a tall bucket that I mixed up a drainage medium for - I like to spotlight plants like this - and a Carolina Reaper chili.  Oh yeah!

The whole Carolina Reaper chili plant is so spicy that you can't work with it without gloves!  All the parts are full of capsaicin, even the roots!  And the fruit tops out at 1,569,300 motherfucking Scovilles!  I cannot wait!!!!  

I grew bird peppers one year and they had a flavor like pineapple and immanent death.  Harbaneros are delicious and sweet, almost floral.  There's a Yugoslavian pepper out there called a Goats' Horn that tastes like a mild green bell pepper and Satanism.  Years ago the Bikers' cousin grew those, and I showed off and ate a bunch of them out of hand and was immediately awesome and cool (we were at a redneck beach party and everyone on the bay thought I was The Shizz.)

I gave in this year and grew two tomato plants:  Improved Early Girl and Black Prince, which is a selection you should try if you like a sweet tomato.  The fruit is on the smaller, saladette side.  It has a distinct red  wine flavor, too.  If you've ever had a Cherokee Purple tomato, you are familiar with that super rich, concentrated tomato flavor.  Black Prince has that, only sweeter, and you don't have to wait until the last gasp of summer to reward your efforts.

I don't can, because when I can, the jars explode and fill my kitchen with botulism and broken glass.  So I freeze.  I have a huge upright deep freeze right in the kitchen so we can work out of it, and it's full of all the stuff I've grown in my garden.  What I like about freezing is 1. Nothing explodes, and 2. Whatever you've frozen thaws out and tastes as fresh as the day it was picked.  We spent cash dollars on the thing to get quality, so if the power goes out, nothing inside the thing even notices.  It's paid for itself so many times over it's stupid.

I also have a dehydrator and that thing sees more use than you'd think.  Instead of using tomato paste, I dehydrate sheets of cooked, spiced and puree'd tomato until it's like cardboard, break it into pieces and seal it in jars.  You drop a chunk in, it melts, things taste good, you win, no can to pitch.  I do the same thing when I make my own garlic powder - I puree raw garlic, which I have in stupid abundance because it grows wild here - and then I BAKE it in the oven on low for an hour and half, stirring it until it goes from white to a medium tan color, and then I spread it out and dehydrate that in sheets.  Once that's dried, I run it through the food processor and then through a coffee bean grinder, and it is HEAVEN. 

I've already given armloads of raw garlic away.  Everyone where the Biker works is vampire proofed thanks to me.  If you guys lived closer you would be vampire proofed too.  So, let's get on that, shall we?  I'll let you shoot down my neighbors' drone with my wrist rocket!