Alright followers, readers, subscribers, whatever I call the rare few of you these days, it’s time for some nonsense before the winter blues put me down like a bear in hibernation.

Each fall, daylight savings casts a spell over my psyche. Down the rabbit hole I go as a traveler into the dark abyss, spiraling downward, inside a cerebral black hole. I pop vitamin D pills, buy special light bulbs, and abuse the treadmill religiously to no avail.

Let’s just say I have some flavor from southern borders boiling in my blood that the low, blinding sun, can not steep. So for me, the garden is perennial therapy. I self-prescribe mother nature to savor the harmony of chemical balance. I self-medicate old man winter to survive.

You might call me a green thumb. My first Foursquare check-in (and a dork) of all places was at the Douglas County Fairgrounds last April where I found myself rummaging through countless pepper seeds at the local exchange.

An older vagrant fellow motions to me. “You like’a-‘dem hot?” He whispers. “I do.” I reply. Looking around nervously the man reaches deep into his inner jacket pocket. Suspiciously, he slips me a small, resealable, plastic baggy. Paranoid, I play along. “No touch bare skin.” He murmurs. “Bhut Jolokia.” Like a native, he warns, “ghost pepper.” Then floats back into the crowd only to disappear himself.

The mysterious character not only hooks me up with my first heirloom in the manner of some twitchy amateur drug dealer, but shares heat from the fruity flesh of another hemisphere that may just keep my soul warm for the first time ever during the last solstice.

The Bhut Jolokia, or “ghost chili”, holds over one million Scoville Heat Units, approximately three times that of the Habanero. The pepper derives from Assum, India where scientists are waging chili warfare by way of a new stun grenade.

Here’s Adam Richman from The Travel Channel’s Man v. Food doing battle.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. So this is me, Owner Operator, Seth Christian Cole, signing off. See you on the the other side. Until then…