Two years ago, I grew a pair of habanero pepper plants as an experiment to see what happened. To say it was a success would be an understatement. I still have three quart storage bags in my freezer. After all, there’s only so much marinade and pepper jelly you can make and give away at any one time.

Since then, my nephew has caught the agricultural bug, and he has much more space for his crops. This year we’ve been getting regularly deliveries of corn, okra, and several varieties of hot peppers including a wicked item called the ghost chili.

On the Scoville Heat Unit rating jalapenos are 2,500 to 8,000, habaneros about 100,000 and the ghost chili about a million! Even with an unbroken skin on the pepper, they’re the peppers you handle with gloves – or a full bio-hazard suit. My sister-in-law claims to like her pepper jelly hot, but I suspect these may be too much for her, We’ll see.

On a total change of subject, the current edition of Asimov’s has the first part of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s new Diving novel – The Court Martial of the Renegat Renegades. Everything in the house stopped while I binge read that first installment, and now I have to wait until the November/December issue of Asimov’s for the next part. If you’ve read any of Kris’s Diving series, especially The Renegat, you’ll want to grab this, both in Asimov’s, and when the actual book becomes available. I know I will