This past spring and summer, I embarked on a container gardening journey. My crops of choice were peppers of all sorts: poblano, habanero, scotch bonnets, and, perhaps most interestingly, fish peppers.

I was raised on peanut butter and elderberry jelly sandwiches. My amazing paternal grandmother, Mary (Kler) Heisinger (who I called “Momma”), made the jelly every year from wild berries at our family home in the Catskill Mountains that my family affectionately calls..