Peppers, Tomatoes, and Repairs

I made a great chicken fettucini alfredo last night, and along with the chicken and some mushrooms, saute'd my first banana pepper. Stirred the whole thing together... mmm. I'd cut into the pepper and cleaned out the seeds before I remembered that I hadn't taken a picture of it - so here it is, with a couple of cherry tomatoes slid in there for eyes. That's my harvest for the last couple of days. Anyone know how long an un-cut-into unrefrigerated pepper will keep? Will it get hotter or milder as it ages, or will it stay the same?


Here's my banana pepper plant now. It doesn't look as green and nice, the leaves have spots, and something is eating them... but it's making great tasting peppers. Can you find the little peppers about to bud out? The inch long one you see had been pea sized for a while - then when I cut the two ripe ones off, within a day, bam, it grew an inch.


And I'm finally getting more new tomatoes. I suspect it was just too hot for a while, then we had some rain and cooler weather, now I've got little tomatoes again. The CD's you see there are for bird-scare. The wind catches them and blows them back and forth, the sun glints and flashes off them as they move. Between that and picking the tomatoes before they get too red and enticing, I haven't had many bird problems this year.


I'm going to wait until the end of August, then start another crop of snow peas. The package says they'll grow well in cooler weather, even through frost.

And in other news, I'm finally getting some repairs done to my house, painting and replacing of masonite board and trim. This board over the carport had some warping and birds had gotten in and made nests. Now it's all clean and neat again. They've been doing some sanding too. I had a trumpet flower vine growing up the post, and it'd spread those little root-things on the wood. SO nice to have it gone.


Here's the back door, out back by my container garden. They've replaced some door trim that had water damage and a whole sheet of masonite.


There's supposed to be thunderstorms tomorrow, hope it doesn't slow the repair work down. The paint will be the exact same shade it is now, Navajo white, with forest green shutters.