polkadots and moonbeams

Last year my garden provided a festival of chillies - enough to rival anything Mexico could offer. This year my rather troubled plant has just managed to yield one, rather small and slightly apologetic green effort. I'm not really sure what to do with it as I feel it deserves a good send-off. Thai curry for one I guess. I think it's all symptomatic of the fact that the back of my house and the garden are in dire need of attention. When the dry rot falling from the bathroom meets the damp rising from the kitchen the whole thing will fall down. I'm not sure whether the rampant ivy is eating into the walls or holding them up. Plan required.

I've been harvesting this year's chilli crop and there's a mini-Festival of Chillies going on in the kitchen. The purple ones which look like baby aubergines are really evil . If they were bagged in a supermarket they would need at least five chillies to symbolise how hot they are and as far as I know the scale only goes up to three. I haven't actually tried them myself but I tested them on a friend last night... he's still alive I think and his cold has gone, but I doubt he will be able to actually taste anything until 2007.