Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 29 JuneA Capeliente pepper on 29 June, leggy and leaning, bare-stemmed low down with all its new shoots bunched tight at the tip, in an outbuilding with no daylight in it at all and a grafted cactus glowing orange on the shelf behind.Week of 29 JuneA Capeliente pepper on 29 June with a flower hanging face-down off a stalk hooked like a shepherd's crook, and at the same node a dark green fruit already sitting in its flat flared star of calyx, under dim indoor light.Week of 13 JulyCapeliente peppers on 17 July, two fruits hanging nose-down into the frame so dark green they read almost black, squared at the shoulder and flattening toward a blunt point, their stalks hooked hard over, in bright low morning sun under blue sky.Week of 20 JulyA Capeliente pepper on 20 July, a thick-walled blunt cone hanging tip-down with one crease across its shoulder, and on the leaf beside it a July coat of kaolin clay, heaviest at the base and still holding the outline of every dried droplet.Week of 3 AugustTwo Capeliente chilies hanging side by side on 5 August, so dark they read blackish-green, their square shoulders scored all over with dozens of fine pale tan corky striations running lengthwise, one still beaded from rain in a hazy backlit flare.Week of 3 AugustA Capeliente pepper on 6 August, a blunt bottle-green oblong with a bluish sheen, its whole surface covered in fine tan corky cracks radiating down and around from the shoulder like stretch marks, under hard bright sun.Week of 10 AugustA Capeliente pepper on 10 August, a barrel-shaped oblong so dark it reads almost black-bronze in the shade, netted all over in tan-cream corky cracks, and on a different plant in the same frame plump cream buds nodding on thick hairy stalks.Week of 24 AugustCapeliente peppers on 25 August, a dozen still deep glossy green down a row of plants, plump and square-shouldered and tapering to a blunt tip, with one small pale toadstool up in the mulch beside them and the sun already behind the trees.Week of 24 AugustFour Capeliente peppers on 26 August hanging from stems jointed purple at every node, each one blocky and thick-walled and blunt at the tip, all still deep green and running with dew, with grass blades pushing up across the frame.
