Coming up to Christmas, everyone at work was broke so we decided to do our holiday parties low budget. Our organization decided to forego the big holiday gala for the first time ever, so our own departments are doing our own thing. One of my teams decided to do a pre-work breakfast at a local pub (PJ's) that offers a surprisingly good quality selection at rock bottom prices, the other took up my offer of a vegetarian pot luck at my house.
Last week was exam week for my older two kids. The youngest had some big projects. The father of one of her friends was in hospital and we offered to have her come over after school any time. My house at best looks well lived in, but this week it surpassed even my liberal tolerance. I planned to come home early on Thursday so that I would be able to tidy a bit before my team descended upon us.
So what does this have to do with my garden? Well, remember the pepper plants I rescued from the frost and brought inside? I had initially intended to set them up in the basement under grow lights, but Josh got back to work full speed ahead on finishing up our kitchen before Orianne's Bat Mitzvah back in the end of November. He is still working on the parts that were impossible to finish on a short deadline. This precluded turning the workshop space into a greenhouse, partly because of competing needs for space, but also because neither of us had the time to set up the lights. I placed the peppers in containers that I could put water in to create a bit of humidity, and set them up close to the lamp I have in my dining room for houseplants and the windows to keep them going until after the Bat Mitzvah. By that time, most of the plants were starting to look pretty far gone. Leaves falling off, stems turning brown. Being the optimist that I am, I have kept watering and spraying for aphids weekly, but there comes a time when it is clear that there is really nothing left one can do.
When I walked into my dining room and looked around at the laundry on the table, the crumbs on the floor, the sweaters and coats and schoolbags flung on chairs, I noticed that there were only three of the fifteen remaining pepper plants which had the remotest of chances of survival. My first act was to toss twelve potted brown sticks into the mounds of snow outside of my back door.
I did manage to get the rest of the room reasonably tidy, and had a lovely dinner with my colleagues. However, I believe my first attempt at maintaining pepper plants over winter indoors had been an utter failure. The pineapple sage is still hanging in there though.
