Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 1 JuneA Habanero pepper on 1 June, water standing in fat separate beads across leaves veined in a neat herringbone, two or three pinhead buds set in its first fork, and the bag rim throwing a solid black band over the top of the frame.Week of 1 JuneNine glossy Habanero leaves on 5 June, puckering between deeply sunken veins, potted up on a bench crowded with the job — a jug speckled all over with mix, a crumpled kraft sack, an empty cup pushed aside.Week of 15 JuneOne small seedling standing alone on 15 June, ten glossy leaves drawn out to long points with distinctly wavy margins and an unusually pale yellow-green cast, a cluster of new leaves at the tip, all of it still beaded from rain in soft light.Week of 22 JuneHabanero peppers on 23 June, one to a bag in a loose triangle of three, all of them a light yellow-green verging on lime and paler than anything else in the frame, rain still standing in clear beads on them and one left-hand tip dried brown.Week of 22 JuneA Habanero on 25 June, a bud nodding on a curved stalk at every fork of the stem and every node stained dark purple-brown, its quilted leaves rucking up between sunken veins and chewed through in a long ragged hole at the front, wet-looking under cloud.Week of 22 JuneHabaneros on 25 June, a whole loose block of them standing on worn grass and not a flower or a fruit among the lot, their leaves a marked pale yellow-green with only the veins and the newest growth darker, in bright hazy sun.Week of 22 JuneA Habanero pepper on 25 June, the stem forking in twos again and again with a bud in the angle of every fork and each node stained purple-black, its quilted leaves paled almost to yellow but for the veins, still wet under flat overcast light.Week of 29 JuneA Habanero on 29 June, still one upright stem gone slightly woody at the base, its glossy leaves drawn to fine drip points and the largest at the top held almost vertical and cupped, on a compost-dusted bench under dim indoor light.Week of 29 JuneA Habanero on 29 June holding its largest leaves out flat to left and right in a wide low silhouette, each blade quilted between neat arching veins and drawn to a fine tip, its shape thrown against a bare plank wall in dim indoor light.Week of 3 AugustA Habanero on 5 August, its leaves the loudest thing in the frame, broad blades quilted and bubbled between every vein rather than lying flat, with pale lime fruit and white flowers hanging under them and everything freshly wet.Week of 31 AugustA Habanero turning base-first at dusk on 5 September — full glossy red at the bottom, gold and orange up the flank, the shoulder still cream-yellow — pushed up against the lens with the drive falling away behind and a pale gap low in banded gray cloud.Week of 31 AugustA Habanero mid-turn on 5 September, its two orange flushes not yet joined across a butter-yellow body, a fan of five or six healed tan scar lines splaying from one point on its lower face like stretch marks — every fold beaded under shadowless light.Week of 31 AugustA Habanero ripening from the blossom end up on 5 September — orange-red over the lower two thirds, a cream and pale gold cap still on the shoulder — with one foreground leaf holed by something and a warm lilac break low on the horizon after sundown.
