Carolina Reaper / Windowsill

Two vignettes

Carolina Reaper by Magnolia667 under Creative Commons ShareAlike 4.0

Carolina Reaper. Down at the city farm on a Saturday morning, planting out winter lettuce with a team including a dad and his teenage son. Turned out to be very capable amidst some goofiness and was doing some nice careful planting, evenly spaced seedlings all at the same height, which is super rare. 

The usual kind of basic chat as we go along. I think somebody said something about a houseplant and this guy pipes up that he’s got a Carolina Reaper at home. Well actually not at home, at his friend’s house, they’re growing it together. The audience didn’t know what that was, disappointingly, so we said that sounds maybe deadly? Yeah, it’s like the second hottest chilli pepper in the world! The hottest one they ever made, that’s illegal because it would kill you [unverified]. So we’re growing the Carolina Reaper and we’re going to make chilli sauce out of it.

Now, in the abstract I could be dismissive of chilli fanatics breeding themselves into spicy oblivion, that is not going to feed the planet. But on that Saturday morning I could feel the care and attention these two lads were paying to that chilli plant and thought well why not? 

And if that chilli turns out to be a gateway plant, if (and this is entirely in my head) the Carolina Reaper has anything to do with the fact that this guy is here willingly with his dad and the lettuces, or even if not -  bring it on, chillies and venus fly traps and those sprouting grass hair kits for everybody.

The windowsill

Windowsill. This stuck in my memory: walking along a town centre street, wall to wall sandstone, no patch of earth in sight. A small ground floor window, jam packed maybe 50cm high with a tangle of annual flowers, growing madly towards a bright grow light just above. I am stopped in my tracks. A bizarre sensation, a dissonance. Calendula growing in such a struggle in this environment. It feels almost like a statement. More for those inside, or outside? 

Are they seeing this as abundant, or grotesque? I feel a connection with the person who has done this. A need for green, maybe. I also think they are slightly crazy. 

I feel uneasy for the plants. Everything about the way they have grown is artificial.

This strained hint at the idea of - a meadow, maybe, or a tropical profusion -  does it bring more cheer or more pain, and if pain, could that be appropriate and somehow useful?