Sweet Maria Ripens

Around the start of the summer I was given a ‘Twilight’ variety chili pepper plant; “an unusual medium/hot variety producing a rainbow of fruits. Harvest July to September”.

The plant – now named Maria – was well-watered, dosed with organic tomato feed, and given as much sunshine as it could take. It produced was a mass of tiny white flowers which turned into a mass of miniature, hard, purple chilies. Over the last couple of weeks or so the fruits have started to grow and ripen. The very first chili harvested contained a maggot; the second two batches were better, four or so small, hot, chilies. They might have been picked a touch under-ripe. A number of fruits are beginning to really ripen now, including a few nice large ones (ding dong, carry on). Ripening starts with the dark purple blanching unpleasantly into a jaundice yellow; that ripen though oranges and reds, starting at the tip and heading to stem.

The plant itself is lovely, a good two-foot high and wide. It dominates the window and is easily seen from the ground, two floors down. Some of the leaves have wilted, there is some leaf burn, and several leaves have a few bites out of them. I removed one caterpillar and two aphids; and I have left several small spiders. The debut crops were used in soups (chicken and vegetable, ham and potato) and were spiced-up marvelously by them. Looks like a bumper crop of hot chilies over the next few weeks. Let’s see if Maria survives the winter – perhaps I should dump her away in a manger somewhere.

The photos demonstrate something more than the plant: that my camera is now working again. Beware, photophobes!

The decidedly surreal final photo is insisde my apartment hall, entering from the front door. That’s The Dude starting at you: through a mirror, on my door, behind kaleidoscopic lenses. Mirrors, doors, and lenses are all good perception references, so I’m sure he would approve.

Fleshers Weak

Two days gone of freshers, plus a weekend. So far, so good. I’m sharing Halls of Residence with some very cool people: a couple of Canadians, a Frenchman, a Scot, and an Englishman. We’ve made friends, and made friends with various people around the halls. Speaking of which, they’re very nice. Clean, modern, comfortable. The shared facilities does not include a living room, but does include a well-equipped kitchen (multiple fridges and cookers, etc.). It has been VERY noisy until 4am, each and every morning, but I survive with equal measures of vodka, going down to say hi, and earplugs.

The University itself is large, overwhelming even. The library has multiple rooms on each of the multiple floors, and there are many buildings. Students jumping first-year, i.e. me, are given morning sessions on the differences between further and higher education, stuff like the Harvard referencing system. Much of it is common-sense. It has been fun to meet the guys from last year – all but two of them are on the course, and all but two of them have been in this week. They are all into the Nintendo DS, and looking at writing homebrew applications for fun, education, and profit. In this respect they are four months behind me (none of them demonstrated interest last year) but it’s good they are heading in the same direction now.

Not much else to report. Looks like I will be founding one games club (board, card, rpg), and have managed to negotiate a discount at the local game retailer. Some of the guys on the course want to start a computer/video games club, have suggested they go ahead and start one.