Surprise!

 

At the end of April we planted a bunch of seeds; made mental notes as to what was planted where; watered and pampered them along until some green popped up. 

We felt so clever.

 A whole forest of dill, several different kinds of lettuce, parsley, sage, cilantro, tomatoes and several different kinds of peppers. The OC likes peppers -  the hotter the better, understandable since, as a small child in Argentina, he ate hot peppers as snacks, the way a normal child would eat candy. As for me, give me some chicken and potatoes, a little salad on the side and pass the salt please. As they grew we were particularly intrigued with one plant that seemed to be doing better than all the other peppers we'd planted.

 "What kind of pepper is this one?" I asked the OC, who is, after all, the CEO of the garden. 

"Not sure," he replied, "but we'll find out by and by." 

Well, by and by came along and our lovely pepper plant developed some interesting buds. A few days later one of the buds started to open revealing a beautiful redish-wine color. 

Finally the penny dropped! That's no pepper - that's the hibiscus we'd thought was over there! We'd planted the hibiscus seeds for fun, not confident that they would actually grow. Of course we're delighted that they did but, lesson learned, we'll not trust to memory next time but physically label everything!