Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 1 JuneA Chili Red pepper in flower on 5 June, creamy-white blooms nodding from the crown with their lobes bent right back and plump green buds beside them, in low evening sun that flares across one corner of the frame.Week of 22 JuneA Chili Red on 25 June with one fruit so far, dark and glossy with a faint dimple at the shoulder, a white flower nodding open beside it and two spent ones gone cream above, every node and joint stained deep purple-brown, in bright hazy sun.Week of 22 JuneA Chili Red pepper on 25 June in flower and fruit at once, eight or ten white five-pointed stars with pale anthers open among a dozen slender green pods, the leaves held so loosely that the whole plant reads open rather than dense.Week of 22 JuneA Chili Red pepper on 27 June carrying fifteen pods at once, each creased lengthwise and cocked upward, with white bells hanging below them and every stem joint stained purple-black, the whole plant still running with rain.Week of 29 JuneA Chili Red pepper on 29 June drawn up on a single slim stem with its branches left far behind at the base, the two longest leaves at the top folding over almost horizontal, in dim flat light against a warm brown plank wall.Week of 29 JuneA Chili Red pepper on 29 June with six or seven pods standing straight up out of the leaves, waxy and so much paler than the foliage that they read almost yellow, while the flowers among them hang the other way in hard side sun.Week of 29 JuneA Chili Red pepper on 29 June, a single stem just forked into two, its quilted leaves holding rows of water beads along the sunken midribs while the two lowest have gone yellow, all of it in flat soft light indoors.Week of 29 JuneChili Red peppers on 2 July standing bolt upright above the leaves, a dozen pale waxy fruit without a trace of red on them yet, each studded with water from overnight rain and lit low and soft with a blown-out band of sun on the grass behind.Week of 6 JulyChili Red peppers on 6 July, twenty pods standing up above the leaves with a brown-purple mottling and dark speckling laid only across the side that faces the sky, the foliage under them chewed to notches and one leaf to its veins.Week of 6 JulyChili Red peppers on 7 July carrying their pods in upright bunches at the stem tips, three clusters of them running pale yellow-green to full green with a few already browning at the point, one white flower opening in among them.Week of 6 JulyA single glossy-leaved stem on 9 July, its leaves notched and holed where something has been feeding and one lower blade freckled yellow-brown, nothing in flower on it — while one pale lilac bell hangs pendant on the plant behind, out of focus in hard low sun.Week of 6 JulyChili Red peppers on 9 July, twenty-odd cones standing straight up above the foliage rather than hanging beneath it, every one still pale yellow-green with not a trace of red — the nearest creased shallowly down one side and beaded over with dew.Week of 13 JulyTwo Chili Red peppers picked on 16 July, each keeping a stalk twice its own length — the left a glossy orange-red ovoid with the dark thread of its style still attached, the right sharply conical, crimson, and split dark under the calyx.Week of 13 JulyA Chili Red pepper on 17 July loaded with a dozen slim pods, pale yellow-green to mid green, some standing bolt upright in a candelabra at the crown and others hanging nose-down below, in low evening sun that runs long shadows down the row.Week of 20 JulyChili Red peppers on 21 July, six or seven standing up and out from the nodes rather than hanging, blunt-tipped and faintly creased, one gone clear orange over its upper half with butter-yellow between, every fruit fat with rain under flat gray light.Week of 20 JulyChili Red peppers on 23 July, a dozen slender cones standing point-up in hard sun while the two that are ripening have turned over and hang down, one warm orange with a yellow tip, the other mottled red-brown over olive above a rust-spotted leaf.Week of 20 JulyA Chili Red pepper picked on 25 July, squat and purse-shaped with a shallow waist rather than a long pod, and a vertical run of five tan corky slits down the shoulder where the skin stretched, glossy scarlet on coarse cream weave in flat indoor light.Week of 3 AugustChili Red peppers on 5 August, twenty and more held erect instead of hanging and running the whole sequence at once, waxy yellow-green through olive and apricot to scarlet striated with fine pale lines, a shingled roof and its louvered cupola behind.Week of 3 AugustChili Red peppers on 6 August, twenty standing erect above the foliage and caught at every stage: waxy yellow-green, lime, a dull olive-and-maroon halfway house, then glossy scarlet, with two white star flowers open low down in warm sun.Week of 10 AugustA Chili Red plant on 15 August seen from above, twenty slender cones standing point-up clear of the leaves and the whole sequence side by side — yellow-green, olive, red creeping up from the tip, then deep scarlet — in dim late light.Week of 17 AugustA Chili Red plant on 17 August shot from ground level looking up, most of its slim cones already glossy scarlet and holding rain, two gone chocolate-bronze, with the treeline behind dissolved to mist under a flat white sky.Week of 5 OctoberChili Red peppers on 7 October, heaped in a stone mortar with the pestle standing upright among them, most a glossy scarlet but one at the center still almost wholly green; hard indoor light at night rakes the fruit and the background falls away dark.Week of 5 OctoberOn 8 October, a small clear woozy bottle stands on a dark speckled counter, filled to the shoulder with a coarse orange-red ferment: pale flat seeds and fine bubbles held against the glass just under the black ribbed cap, in soft flat indoor light.
