Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 29 JuneCarmen peppers on 29 June, already forking and woody at the base, one node carrying a cream-white flower cupped face-down beside a tight green bud, their flat glossy leaves catching a sheen off the soft indoor light.Week of 6 JulyA young plant on 6 July, one upper leaf eaten back to a lace of margin and vein and the node below it carrying nothing but pale stubs, a whitish scar where a shoot broke off, and one new tip pushing out, all of it rain-wet.Week of 6 JulyA Carmen pepper on 9 July, three flowers nodding out of the leaf axils on short recurved stalks — one open with its creamy petals turned right down, the others still shut tight — nothing set yet, and dew standing in bright fine drops on every leaf face.Week of 20 JulyA Carmen pepper on 20 July, two blocky green fruits hanging tip-down under scalloped calyces on a plant still open enough to see through, its leaves bitten away at the margins and filmed silver with kaolin clay in hard noon sun.Week of 20 JulyA Carmen pepper on 21 July, one smooth green oblong twice as long as it is wide and squared across the shoulder, a knot of cream buds at the node beside it, the whole plant still beaded from rain and not a fleck of the July clay on any leaf.Week of 3 AugustThree Carmen peppers on 4 August, squat and blocky with four rounded lobes down each side divided by deep vertical creases and a puckered lobed blossom end, their broad calyx collars spread flat over the shoulders, a few rain beads left.Week of 17 AugustA Carmen pepper on 22 August, held up in a bare hand and caught mid-turn — deep gold across the top shoulder sliding through cream to clear green over the bottom third — square-shouldered, three-lobed and beaded with water.Week of 24 AugustA Carmen pepper on 26 August running the whole scale on one fruit — yellow through orange to deep red-orange, and unevenly — with a second still lemon-yellow behind it and a third wholly green, all of them running with dew.Week of 24 AugustTwo Carmen peppers on 28 August, blocky at the shoulder and tapering to a lobed blunt point, one ripened to a deep glossy orange-red and the other still yellow-gold with green in it, under leaves blotched with pale rings.Week of 31 AugustA Carmen pepper coloring from the blossom end back on 3 September — deep orange-red across its four lobes, cream-yellow over the shoulder and one whole flank, the two smeared together rather than meeting on a line — rain running off it under a gray sky.
