Texas Red

No work tonight. So decided some Texas Red chili sounded good for dinner. Hard to find chili here and even harder to find good chili. Anywhere else in the world, if you ask for a bowl of chili, a chili burger, chili dog or chili cheese fries and you get chili con carne. Not here. Here you get green or red peppers. Sometimes with pork cooked in it, sometimes not. But you will not get what the rest of the planet calls chili. So my only choice is canned chili (which most often has wheat flour) or make my own. Mine is better, any way.

Legs feel better since using the lotion and Benadryl mix this morning. No more itching.

Temp is supposed to get really cool tonight. Frost is possible. Was going to cover the tomato plants with plastic but the wind is still too strong. Just have to cross my fingers. They already look weak and assaulted by the winds and now going to take one more beating by the cold. I refreshed and added more mulch around the bases. Since they're perrenial by nature, they could recover even if the tops freeze, long as the roots don't.

Went ahead and planted out the lettuce seedlings and mulched them. Didn't need to plant many, if any at all. Noted a number of seedlings coming up from the direct planted seeds. Did the same thing last year. Maybe I'll learn someday. Don't want to be overrun with lettuce but I can harvest completely over time.

Got a call back from the agency for a contract at the base. Seems they're increasing the pay offered. Going to call tomorrow and see what kind of deal can be done. If it's a decent living wage I'll take it. Find out tomorrow!

Think I'm going to punch small holes in an old garden hose to convert it to a drip hose. Drip irrigation worked really well last year. Problem was the drip hoses, which mostly deteriorated by the end of the season. Maybe this will last longer and be more reliable. Worth a try.

Moved the large tomato plant from the living room to the office. In the living room, it's had light from only one east facing window. In the office it will have light from two windows, south and west facing. Like to see if it produces more fruit this way. It took the small moving dolly to get it moved. Managed to get it done and not break any branches. But since I pruned it last week the growth accelerated and it's nearly the same size now as before pruning. (Now if the ones outside would just start growing like that..) Still be best to harvest the current crop of tomatoes on it, then trim it further back. Once fully tracing the longest vine, figured if fully extended it would be 12-14 ft long.

Think I'll get to bed. Usually stay up and watch STNG but going to skip it tonight. (Oh, yeah. I'm amending this post and it's now around 10 PM.)