Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 8 JuneA Tender Sweet Orange watermelon on 11 June with two leaf ages side by side — the older blades cut ragged nearly to the midrib, the newer ones only into three blunt lobes — beaded with water and throwing a hard plant-shaped shadow in the flash.Week of 29 JuneA Tender Sweet Orange watermelon on 29 June, four or five runners laid flat from the crown and every blade cut almost to the midrib into rounded scalloped lobes, matt dull gray-green, the growing tips still crumpled in low sun.Week of 6 JulyA Tender Sweet Orange watermelon on 7 July, its thick runners stiff with white bristles and two or three small yellow flowers low among the leaves — one pale swollen thing half hidden behind a blade at the center, too tucked away to call fruit or spent bud.Week of 20 JulyA Tender Sweet Orange watermelon on 23 July, banded dark and pale green with every boundary jagged rather than clean and still on its short ribbed stalk, the bristles along the vine catching a low sun that lays long soft leaf shadows over it.Week of 20 JulyA young melon on 23 July, an even oval mottled darker green over a paler ground with no stripe or rib to it yet, resting in clover, its vine bristled white the whole way to a growing tip so furred the leaves have no shape at all.Week of 27 JulyTwo Tender Sweet Orange watermelons on 31 July lying right down in a mat of clover and chickweed that has closed over the vine, each barrel-shaped and banded lengthwise, every stripe stippled with a fine net of its own, in flat damp light.
