My Indoor Garden - Third Moment for Shedding Light

Since I live in a one-room apartment, I have done the best I can with my space.  I don't have a porch or even a window box.  So here are some of my companions, as I think of them.

First are the kitchen plants, which are mostly flowers.  All of them started in tiny little pots I bought at Lowe's.  Now the African violet is so hardy, it outgrows every pot I've put it in.  The jade is also overtaking the table, which is fine with me.

There's a big, tall one in the back, and the other little one on the windowsill is a mint plant.  There's a lavender plant hiding on the left.

Then there are the spicy hot pepper plants that were given me from seedlings by my Vietnamese friends at the nail salon where I go for manicures.

During the winter, the plants bore white flowers as well as red peppers.  Right now, they are taking a rest and putting forth a few fruits and a flower or two.  The baby is the smaller one.  I use the peppers occasionally when I make rice and dal.

Since my flowers did so well, I decided last summer to try growing vegetables from seed.  I planted lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes.  The lettuce went well and I ate it all.  The cucumber put forth yellow flowers but never bore fruit.  And the tomato - oh, my!  It smelled wonderful and got bigger and bigger and bigger ... and still no tomatoes.

So last week I bought a small tomato plant to keep it company (and possibly to help fertilize it this summer).  They seem to be happy.

I don't recall the name of the plant to the right of the tomato.  He is a bit of a curmudgeon.  I rescued him from the office.  I don't remember who gave him to me.  I don't think this is the right environment for him - anymore than the office was.  But I try to keep him happy.

Last but not least I have a couple of new plants.  A flowering bromilead and a smaller succulent.  I don't know how well it will do yet, but for the first few weeks it seems happy.  I put it with my Tibetan studies hoping it would inspire (old lazy) me.

I will plant some more seeds in a week or two.  The weather has been glorious.  I had a couple of bees get in the house (I know not how) and I carefully trapped and released them outside.  But perhaps they were inside long enough to help the tomatoes.