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There are just so many chillis on the plants! I keep thinking at that I should do a count, but I just can’t face it! I just know that I’d lose track on the first stem of the first plant.

I’ve been hoping to see a bit of colour appearing on at least one chilli, but they seem to stay their initial colours. Checking back on last year’s blog entires, it seems like the first blushes appeared at about the start of August (maybe just a bit earlier)! That seems just so far away still! Oh well. Just have to wait for some more sun and see if it helps them along! Something to look forward to, I guess!

Thanks to a work contact of Bec’s we were provided with a great day out yesterday to watch the Monaco Grand Prix at the Williams team factory site at Grove.

The day involved breakfast, a tour around the Williams museum with all the old cars from the last however many years, a go in an F1 simulator and some scaletrix racing, and then the race on large screens with some live link-ups from the team in Monaco, all followed up with a very nice lunch.

Highlight of the day was probably the simulator ride. Great fun, and a lot harder than, say, a Playstation racing game. Also helped that the guy running it, Andy, was a real laugh.

The race itself was pretty boring. Of all the races of the year I always find it pretty tedious. There’s not a lot of overtaking generally in F1 lately, but Monaco is just impossible. You just have to wait (hope?) for an accident (there wasn’t anything notable), rain (there wasn’t any) or something absolutely unpredictable (millions of frogs crossing the circuit?) to happen to make it at all interesting. I’m sure it’s a great day out for all the rich and famous, but for TV viewing I think it pretty much sucks. Can’t see them getting rid of it off the calendar though. More’s the pity.

Given that it was pouring down constantly all day, and I mean all day, it was a great way to spend a long weekend Sunday. A big thanks to Mike for letting me tag along after a late cancellation. I was all prepared to be very, very jealous of Bec for getting to go while I sat home on the couch…

Didn’t really need to use an ultrasound to sort this out.  Just a picture.  Rach’s first chilli has arrived now too on one of the poor little plants that I had to give away.  I think it’s a Prarie Fire by the look of it, but not quite sure yet.  I can’t remember what I gave her in the end.  We’ll confirm that soon once it grows a little more…

Nice to know your offspring are doing well out in the big wide world!

It was a brilliantly fine morning this morning and as we manged to wake up at about 6:30 this morning we decided to go for a walk.  Actually, Bec decided, and then managed to harass me into it.  Glad she did though, it was a stunning morning for it.  We decided to walk down to Tower Bridge to get some breakfast.

On the way down to the riverside, we found that the birds that had been camping on the life-preserver had been lucky enough to have their chicks hatch.  Six of them!  Good luck feeding that lot!  Seemed that half the neigbourhood was out having a look too.

We did have a bit of a problem when we got to Tower Bridge though.  We were too bloody early for brunch anywhere! Not that it worried us too much.  We just sat in the sun and watched all the tourists arrive and take their photos.  And then had an average brunch by the riverside in the sun. Yay Sunday!

Well, I was going to update you with the latest chilli count as it’s been a really slow week for any sort of news, but to be honest I just keep losing track. Let’s just say that there are well over a hundred now. It’s the Riots that are the problem. They’ve just keep exploding!

No colour appearing on any of them yet, but hopefully this week will be as sunny as today and that’ll happen soon. The Ring of Fires in particular are looking nice and big, and I can’t wait to get into them. I’ll be really interested to taste the others too, and see what the difference in taste between them all.

And the number of chillis has started to grow almost exponentially.  The count as of yesterday was up to 48.  Yum, yum!  The riots in particular are exploding.  One of them has such a dense little patch of them that I’m hoping the plant can support them.  I’m looking forward to seeing how the plant looks when they start to change colour…

Rainy day today, and the last day of the long weekend, so it was time to re-pot the chillis into their last, big pots. I should really have done it a couple of weeks ago, I think. Some of them were pretty root-bound and were a bit smaller than their matching plant that had been in a slightly bigger medium pot, but hopefully they’ll be fine. Hasn’t seemed to stop them flowering etc.

Gave me a good chance to count the chillis that have appeared. There are 16 actual chillis to date between the Ring of Fire, Prarie Fire and Riots. Still non chillis on the Zimbabwe Bird Pepper plants, but they look like they’re about to explode with a heap of flowers really soon (although there is one flower out now on one of them).

As it was a long weekend here and we thought the chances of us just wasting it sitting inside were pretty high we decided to make a bit of an effort to go out and see another of the free London museums. This time the Science Museum.

We had a pretty good wander around, but we’d have to say that it’s probably 3rd on our list so far after the Natural History museum, and the British museum. Not that there wasn’t some interesting stuff, but it’s just that I think you have to really be into some things before the exhibits really make too much sense to you. Even some of the descriptions of the items seem to assume quite a level of familiarity with the topic. But still enough cool stuff there to keep us both interested for a bit.

As it was a nice day we decided that we’d walk for a while once we left there. Hyde Park isn’t that far away, so we walked up to there and through the park down towards town. At the corner of Hyde park there is a new memorial to the Kiwi soldiers from the world wars. Although we’d been past it on busses now and then, this was the first time we’d had a close up look. Pretty impressive really.

We were going to catch the tube from there, but it was still so nice that we just kept walking…

And walking….

And walking!

And we walked all the way home! I’m guessing that most of you have no idea just how far that is, but believe me it’s quite a way. Mostly down the river, so it winds up and down as you go nominally east. We must have walked for about 3 1/2 hours, including the couple of pub stops we required in order to rest our weary feet! Good though.

Here’s the first Riot chilli of the year too.

The observant among you will notice that these ones seem to start off yellow instead of the green as in the below post.

The really observant among you will notice that unlike the Ring of Fire below, this plant rotates upwards when it’s pollenated so the chilli points up. The Ring of Fires start to droop quickly, I guess so they can easily support the weight of the bigger chillis. Weird to watch it happen. Happens over about 2 days. One day I must see if I can get a time lapse film of it all happening.

It’s snooker season on TV at the monemt, and it’s got me hooked again.  I could just sit there watching it for hours and hours and hours.  There’s just so much about it that seems so restful.  The whispered commentary, the green of the table, the lack of much roaring from the “crowd”, the relatively slow pace of the game…  Everything really!

And when there’s a long safety battle going on with the players trying for snookers I’m always reminded of a Japanese Zen rock garden where no matter where you look from you can only see so many rocks at once.

Maybe one day I’ll head to a session and sit there for a few hours soaking in the atmosphere.  Maybe.