Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 8 JuneA melon seedling on 11 June, the pair of seed leaves still hanging on at its base and three blades gone tan-brown along their margins, the soft-haired stalks beaded with water — the flash holding it bright while everything past it drops off to black.Week of 6 JulyA melon vine on 7 July, no fruit set on it anywhere, its broad kidney-shaped leaves only shallowly scalloped and beaded all over with rain, one small yellow flower just opening on a green center while another beside it has already collapsed.Week of 27 JulyThree young melons set along one runner on 30 July, each still an even pale gray-green with faint shading bands running stem to blossom end and no netting anywhere yet, their soft hair catching the light along the silhouette in flat cloud.Week of 27 JulyOne melon on 30 July, pale and still smooth with no netting begun, cradled deep among its own stems in a vine so rain-soaked that every leaf and tendril is beaded, and one upturned young leaf below it reads as a second fruit until you look.Week of 17 AugustA Green Flesh honeydew on 18 August lying on its side, as long as two of the leaves beside it, the rind unnetted and unribbed — waxy cream stippled all over with fine sage-green flecks — under low side light throwing hard shadows.Week of 17 AugustA Green Flesh honeydew on 22 August, round and still on the vine, its rind smooth as wax with no net over it at all and only a lemon flush across the upper shoulder, the bristly stem looping in past it with tendrils gone dry and curled.Week of 24 AugustGreen Flesh honeydews on 27 August, lying among their own vines with the rind gone completely smooth — no netting, no ribbing anywhere on either one — one still a uniform pale cream-green and the other blushing buttery yellow across its crown.
