Well, you learn something new every day, I suppose. Today I went outside to check on my little garden I've kept this summer (my first ever to keep all on my own - I grew lettuce, sugar snap peas (on accident - a seed was mixed in with the lettuce mix), carrots, and am now growing many tomato varieties, red peppers and banana peppers). I've been waiting for a month or so now for my full-sized sweet banana peppers to do something to indicate they were ready for me to pick. I don't know what I was expecting...a little timer to go off and tell me they're ripe? But really, I thought they'd just stay that yellow color, but today I got my answer: one of them is starting to turn bright red! A bit alarmed, I went back inside to research growing banana peppers at home (which I probably should have done a long time ago) and what do you know? Apparently, they really are supposed to get red and are supposed to be really sweet when fully ripe, but usually they are harvested when they are the yellowy-green color of the pepper pictured behind my red one. That explains why when buying them in jars at the grocery store they are still that flourescent yellow color.

Interesting. I feel a little silly for not knowing that, but oh well. I think now I'll just wait until it turns fully red before I harvest it. Might as well, right? Now I just need to figure out a way to keep my nearly 6' tall tomato plants from falling over and uprooting themselves any more than they already are...

It's a little bit of a mess, as you can see.