Tropicality in West Virginia

Tom and I live in the wrong place. We both prefer hot, sunny weather. That kind of weather only consistently occurs in our neck of the woods for about 3 months. Here it is, the middle of September, and it's been chilly and rainy just about the whole month.

We also like to grow tropical plants from seeds and cuttings. As you can imagine, they don't do too well in West Virginia if they're left outside, so we have to lug them inside every fall and back outside as soon as it's warm enough. Our house has plenty of windows but most rooms don't have enough light to keep the plants looking good. Alive, usually, but not well.

So last year, since I was still living in town (where I work), I took my plants to the school's big new greenhouse so they'd have some pampering over the winter. Turns out that they didn't do too much better there than they did at home because whoever was in charge didn't keep a real close eye on the temperature or watering and a bunch of plants barely made it through.

After dragging an 8' banana plant home over the mountain in the back of the truck (destroying most of the leaves in the process), we've decided to just take our chances with leaving them inside the house this winter. I think that the pineapple plants will probaby go back to Tom's friend's greenhouse since they're easier to move around. Last winter he left one pineapple in that greenhouse, and lo and behold, this spring it sprouted a tiny baby pineapple.

We didn't think it would grow enough to ripen, but by golly it has. It's just about ready for harvesting. I'm thinking that a few more pineapple plants will make their way to that greenhouse this fall.