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     Let's get back to the mundane. I had two more red reapers ripen and I picked them for breakfast on Sunday. They were small, but I still had my worries. I went against all my instincts of survival and I diced them up and put them both in my eggs. The heat level was insane. As you may know that when you cook peppers you take some of the heat away, and then with having other food items around them, a little more heat gets sapped off. When I took my first bite of eggs, which had no peppers what  so ever in them, I got hit with some high level heat. I went in for a bite with actually pepper pieces, and was astonished at the heat level. It was like eating a ghost pepper raw, which is listed at 1 million on the scoville heat units scale. What that means is, that it takes 1 million parts of water to one part of capsaicin to delete it to a level that it doesn't effect you. Ghost was the world champion for heat about 10 years ago, so you can see how far peppers have gone in that time. Since I feel my tolerance is still very low, I was worried about eating one raw. I just don't know if I'm ready, but I have to hit it at some point. I have been eating more raw peppers lately, and the heat has been manageable. These are peppers that most people would lose their minds over, so I'm feeling pretty good, but not quite there. Here are those reapers so you can see just how small they were.

     That's my mini salt shaker which is about an inch and a half tall, so those were probably the size of a quarter. They still packed a ton of heat for such a small pepper. I have 4 more pods on the plant, and 3 are smaller than those, and the first one, is almost ripe. It has been taking it's time which is a little scary. It is double the size of those. I could wimp out and just put it in food to enjoy it, but what's the fun in that. I'll leave it up to you. If you want to see a video of me in pain, let me know. If enough people want a good laugh, I'll make a pod review video it, even though I don't think I'm ready to take on the challenge. Do be honest, I don't think you can ever be ready for that level of heat.

     Did you know basil flowered? I didn't but it was a wonderful surprise when I found out. I walked out over the weekend and noticed something strange going on with my purple opal basil, as I got closer, I noticed that it was tiny snap dragon like flowers. They are really cool, and I hope the plant fills out more so there will be more of these tiny flowers.

     By the way, the smell of that leaf is outstanding. I haven't tasted it yet, but I'm assuming that it tastes pretty good too.

     I picked up more soil today, and transplanted a few more peppers into bags. Oh yeah, I did manage to finally get some bags. I found a 20 pack of 5 gallon bags at a tremendous price. The soil however, is never at a great price, so I have to buy limited amounts at a time. The 3 bags I got today were able to transplant 10 plants, 9 in bags, and one in a 1 gallon pot. I still have some soil left over, but it would only fill half a bag, so I'll hang on to it for now, because my buddy has some different varieties of bonnets coming my way, is I'll save the soil for putting them in some 1 gallon pots. This is what that large area of 1 gallon pots looks like now. I'm slowly widdeling it down.

     All that dark area was where pots were, so you can see how much I've cut it down so far. I do have the plants spaced a little more than before so they take up more room then their number would before, but its still a pretty big dent.

     One last garden pic and this one is a bit of a miracle. I don't know if you remember the turmeric that I was so excited about. It died off. I mean dead and gone with no signs what so ever of it. I even planted those large Chinese red meat turnips in the area where it was. About a week ago I was weeding the garden and noticed a sprout coming through. I knew immediately that it wasn't a weed, just because of how thick it was. It was strong and healthy looking. I took a pic and texted my buddy to see if he might have known what it was. He asked what had been there in the past, and I told him that's where the turmeric was. His guess was that was it. I couldn't believe it. It had died about 6 months ago, but here it was back from the grave. This is the Phoenix of plants for sure, so that is it's name. I give you the impossible plant named Phoenix.

     How incredible is that? I don't know what I did to kill it last time, so I have no idea how to take care of it this time, but I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing in that area and hope that it works. I really want some turmeric from the garden, and it has a cool looking flower.

     It's that time again, Favorite Song of the Week. This one comes from a band I learned about last Friday. My buddy texted me and said, let's trade albums to listen to tonight. I sent him the self titled album from Towers of Power and he sent me Eidola's album Degeneterra. I'd never heard of them and this was one of their older albums. I instantly loved this album. It is such a great blend of sounds and genres. Since this isn't a current album I just went with the first song I could find, and it's a good one. I give you Eidola with their song "Omni: First Temple".

     I hope you have a great evening, peace in and goodnight.