Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 1 JuneA Black Cherry on 1 June, six or seven blister-textured leaves spread low and wide with the growing tip standing bare and straight above them, in a mix so loaded with perlite it reads white — a cobweb strung across the wall socket behind.Week of 6 JulyA Black Cherry tomato on 9 July, one arching branch reaching right out over the path, yellow star flowers with their petals bent back in short trusses and small round green fruit scattered among them — the leaves dulled all over by kaolin, woodland behind.Week of 20 JulyBlack Cherry tomatoes on 23 July, four round and matte down one truss with a darker blue-green shoulder ringing each calyx, a dried spray speckled white across the skins and streaked downward where the droplets ran, sepals spread stiff not clasping.Week of 3 AugustBlack Cherry tomatoes on 5 August, a dozen small globes still whitish-green and mottled darker around the shoulder, several already looking translucent as they come up to breaking color, their long narrow sepals flaring straight out like stars.Week of 10 AugustBlack Cherry tomatoes on 12 August, six on one truss and no two at the same stage — the nearest gone olive at the shoulder and muddy red-brown below, their satin skin stippled all over with fine cream dots, in flat dull daylight.Week of 31 AugustA Black Cherry truss on 3 September with not one of them darkened yet, small and round and beaded with rain, each on its own hairy stem radiating out from the one central node, the lawn behind gone soft green.Week of 7 SeptemberBlack Cherry tomatoes on branched, densely hairy trusses on 11 September — about ten still glossy green and faintly striped, two turning a dusky brownish-red to mahogany with green streaks lingering at the shoulders — in soft, even daylight.
