Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 1 JuneSugar Rush Peach peppers on 3 June, two seedlings to a bag and set so far apart that the mix reads bare around them, photographed at failing blue dusk with the gravel gone gray and one lit window in the trees behind.Week of 22 JuneA Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 27 June, its first fruit set tight against the ribbed stem with the calyx lobes splayed back down over the shoulder, the crimped leaves above it wet, round-holed where something has fed, and paling to the crown.Week of 6 JulySugar Rush Peach peppers on 6 July, two plants of the same sowing gone different ways — one dark and rippling at the leaf edge with buds crowded at its tip, the other pale and yellow and chewed to rags, both streaming after rain.Week of 6 JulySugar Rush Peach peppers on 7 July, a dozen cream bells hanging face-down along the forks with a yellow-green blotch inside every lobe and the ring of anthers gone brown in the throat, the whole plant running with rain.Week of 6 JulySugar Rush Peach peppers on 7 July shot down into the crown, every early stage between the flowers at once — a fat green button, then short blunt pods with the dried bloom still stuck on the end — the broad leaves below rain-soaked and shining.Week of 6 JulySugar Rush Peach peppers on 7 July, one young fruit a blunt pale teardrop finely ridged down its length with a shallow crease across one shoulder, another above it creased and puckered, everything shining wet in the minutes after rain.Week of 6 JulyA Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 9 July with flowers and first fruit on it at once — cream-white petals curled right back on downcurved stalks, three small green fruits just set behind them — and every leaf beaded until the whole plant glitters in low sun.Week of 6 JulyA Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 12 July, deep in the shade of its own crown — one blocky pale fruit dented and creased and drawn out to a rounded beak, the brown thread of its style still hanging off the tip, three spent flowers collapsing just above it.Week of 6 JulyA Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 12 July, three stages in one frame: a long pale yellow-green pod hooked down onto a leaf, a squat green fruitlet still pointing straight up, and one small creamy flower nodding between them in dappled sun.Week of 6 JulyA Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 12 July held out sideways from the stem: waisted at the neck, swelling to a rounded middle, then flaring into a broad flattened lobed tip as though two pods had fused, glossy where the low warm sun strikes it.Week of 6 JulyA Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 12 July, a plump pale apple-green teardrop broadest below the middle and hanging waxy and smooth but for a few shallow dimples, with the spent flower dried to a rust-brown rosette at the node above it in side light.Week of 13 JulyA Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 17 July, creamy yellow and wrinkled into long folds down its whole length, tapering to a blunt three-lobed tip, with small white bells still nodding above it and a damp sheen on everything in flat soft light.Week of 13 JulyA Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 17 July, a stubby blunt wedge of cream-lemon held out sideways with a longer folded one above it and a third still deep green below, kaolin clay lying heaviest along the thick central stem in flat wet light.Week of 13 JulySugar Rush Peach peppers on 17 July, two lemon-cream fruits puckered into deep folds with flared lobes and hooked tips, one curled almost into a ring, kaolin clay running heavy along the upper faces of the stems in flat overcast light.Week of 20 JulyA Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 20 July, waxy pale chartreuse from squared shoulder to a pinched lobed tip, with a smaller and far more crumpled fruit above it and July kaolin clay pooled chalk-white in the branch forks below.Week of 20 JulyCream-yellow with no green left anywhere on it, a Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 20 July kinked sharply below the shoulder and bent round like a comma, its skin quilted into soft ripples and shallow diagonal creases under a hard front light.Week of 20 JulyOne Sugar Rush Peach on 20 July folds a bulbous lobe deep into a long horn that curves away and blunts at the tip, waxy butter-yellow throughout, lit dappled from one side with the leaf behind it hiding where the stalk attaches.Week of 20 JulySeen from underneath deep inside its own bush, a Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 20 July hangs tip-down and lemon-yellow, drawn to a fine point with the skin faintly rippled, the sun coming through the leaves all round it and blue sky at one corner.Week of 20 JulyCurved so far round that the tip points nearly back at its own stalk, a Sugar Rush Peach pepper on 23 July lies blocky at the shoulder and creased into deep lobes along one edge, one small insect resting on the waxy skin in patchy sun.Week of 3 AugustSugar Rush Peach chilies on 4 August, eight or nine already waxy cream-yellow with no green and no red left anywhere, some hanging straight down and others standing out sideways, on bare leggy stems with low sun coming through from the right.Week of 3 AugustSugar Rush Peach chilies on 9 August, a dozen hanging at rim height all the same creamy lemon but no two the same shape, one short and puckered at the tip, one crumpled into a hook, the largest sweeping out in a long tapered curve.Week of 10 AugustSugar Rush Peach chilies on 12 August, eight ivory-cream pods shading to butter-yellow with one shoulder creased into two deep transverse folds, and every node on the stems knobbed with the pale corky scars of fruit picked or dropped.Week of 17 AugustA Sugar Rush Peach picked on 20 August, pale apricot cream all over and swollen at one end into three rounded bosses with a deep crease between them, its snapped stalk showing pale broken fibers, on a red-checked towel indoors.Week of 31 AugustHalf a dozen Sugar Rush Peach chilies on 3 September, pale cream-yellow and lightly wrinkled with the apricot blush starting at their tips, hanging from stems already gone bare, fallen yellow leaves lying underneath.Week of 7 SeptemberAbout ten Sugar Rush Peach peppers hang among bare stems on 11 September, all pointing down — lumpy, wrinkled along their length and waxy, the nearest a soft peach-cream, those behind pale greenish-yellow, one near the top still pale green.Week of 21 SeptemberSugar Rush Peach peppers on 22 September, about ten fruit hanging pendant from the nodes, most still pale butter cream and slightly translucent with soft wrinkled lobes while one at lower left has swollen to peach orange. Flat overcast light, dry throughout.Week of 28 SeptemberSugar Rush Peach peppers on 29 September, eight or more wrinkled, dented pods hanging pendant on short pedicels in a waxy creamy ivory stage, one at center already turned soft peach and puckered. Light is flat and diffuse under an overcast sky.
