OK – I know that as soon as I start this I’m going to be in trouble because I know that I am the most crushing bore on the subject of my home-grown stuff. However, I’m going to bore everyone again.

I am making pizza for dinner tonight, which is a fairly common event over a weekend here. In fact, the pizzas have ended up as the subjects of PADs by me and ‘im on many an occasion before. The sauce has been made by roasting some tomatoes, chilli and garlic in the oven while the jacket potatoes we were having for lunch were cooking, then blending them into a sauce in the food processor. The dough will go into the bread machine in an hour or so and just before it got dark, I decided to go into the greenhouse and pick some sweet peppers and some chilli peppers to go onto the top of the pizzas. They’ll get augmented with some mushrooms, onions, olives and mozzarella when I finish it all off later.

This “carno di torro” sweet pepper looked so sexy with its curves and red flanks that I decided it needed to be photographed. So, here it is. We’ve not had a big crop of sweet peppers and they are notoriously difficult in our really too-cold climate but I still think the smallish crops are worth the effort for the flavour.

I spent ages getting “my reds red” in the shot if you see what I mean without either drowning it in green or ending up with overblown reflected highlights but DM says “it’s badly lit” so I expect he’s right, he usually is.

Anyway, badly lit or not, I really like it and think it looks very beautiful.

All we’ve got left now are a couple of peppers, a few chillis, leeks and a couple of celariacs, plus the winter cabbages and kale that will mature enough to eat in the early spring. This year’s crops have been sparse but what we’ve had has been really good. I’m hopeful of better weather next year.

Last year, I was shooting something with a sting in its tail.