The Perfect Flower
Beautiful, Flavorful, Hill Country Hot Peppers
by Megan Willome, photos by Danielle Lochte
Hot peppers, if you really look at them, are beautiful They’re as colorful as they are flavorful, with a shape that invites you to dig in, whether or not your capsaicin receptors are ready.
Dr. Ron Tilton, a retired diabetes researcher at UTMB-Galveston, always had a garden and always grew the spicy stuff. A few years ago he turned his hobby into a business: Hill Country Hot Peppers, which sells fresh and dehydrated peppers along with its own line of sauces and jellies.
Tilton says peppers are not vegetables — they are fruits that come from self-pollinating flowers.
“They’re called ‘perfect flowers’ for that reason. You don’t need bees for pollination,” he said. “But bees are good for cross-pollination, and that’s how we get the strange peppers.”
Tilton loves creating strange peppers. He’s developed three new varietals.
Read the rest of the story in Rock&Vine’s summer issue
“Megan Willome has captured the essence of crow in this delightful children’s collection. Not only do the poems introduce the reader to the unusual habits and nature of this bird, but also different forms of poetry as well.”
—Michelle Ortega, poet and children’s speech pathologist