So I sigh, and break off a big handful, rinse them under the kitchen tap and chop them up.  When they hit the soup, a smell emerges, smokiness, a little sour. What if they make the entire soup taste off?  But the smell settles and turns more pleasant, and I continue on.  The thread of memory stretches back, all the way to a year ago when I started peppers seeds.  The Anchos did not sprout, it was a risk trying old seed, but I had overplanted and hoped for the best.  No huge loss:  I’d just buy a few plants.  So later in the spring, at the market, I pick up several plants (this too is a fiasco, they were mixed on a shelf and I end up home with a weird variety, so I re-buy another the next day at a second market, spending in the end much more than a seed packet on three sturdy plants).  But these are hardy things, way bigger than my home grown peppers, and it’s not a good year for peppers at all: cold for too long, then too hot.  These manage to grow happy and tall, laden branches leaning against the garden fence for support, heart-shaped fruit hanging down.  They are the subsidy peppers—always available for dinner or batch of salsa, making up the difference when I’m low on bells or banana peppers.

So at the end of the year I have a surplus; a few days’ picking was chosen for roasting and freezing.  I came in, smoky (last night D says, “I remember that day, you were grouchy”).  I probably had other stuff to do, but I finished up what I had started.  And 4 or 5 months later, I stand in front of the stove, stirring in a big bag of sweet corn.  The string of thought stretches ahead; peppers will be planted later this week.  I have a fresh packet of seeds.

And the soup?  Fantastic.