When I was younger, I remember telling my parents that I would never, ever have a high-maintenance yard. I was sure that my future yard would be grass - with maybe a few trees if uninterrupted green looked really terrible. How funny it is to find myself in an apartment with no yard (a situation that would have sounded quite appealing to my teen-aged self!), and yet plants - that I planted!
Early this month I purchased some seedlings from our local nursery and potted them on our balcony. Most of them seemed to start off well enough, and I've enjoyed watching them grow while I plan all sorts of great uses for the fresh produce.
The red pepper, however, gave me problems from the very beginning. When everything else began to grow and flourish around it, the darn pepper just vacillated between "nearly dead" and "almost dead." It looked terrible! Finally I decided to give it one week before pulling it up and replacing it. I doused it one last time with water-dish soap solution to kill off pests, moved things around a bit to give it a bit more light, and told everyone that the plant would soon be gone if it didn't start growing peppers.
And grow peppers it did! Within days we saw the first successful baby peppers. This poor plant still looks like it's about to keel over, but it has staved off death (for now) by convincing me it will eventually produce something edible.
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