I was wandering through the aisles of one of the gardening stores in town (which shockingly, still has plants!) and discovered a pineapple plant! Needless to say, it needed to come home with me.

Now last year, I tried the whole “grow a pineapple plant from the top of a store pineapple” thing. It didn’t go anywhere. See, by the time pineapples get to Illinois, they generally don’t have very healthy tops. My pineapple top just sort of withered and died.

But here it was, the chance to grow my very own pineapple.

The only reason I recognized the plant as anything other than one of those general tropical houseplants they were selling next to it was that it was actually growing a pineapple. Unfortunately, it didn’t product a strong enough stalk for the little guy, so he had to be pruned away. But there was a mini-pineapple, and it looks like there might be two more shoots trying to grow from the mother plant.

. . we’ll see whether the new fruit shoots go anywhere. In the meantime, its been stationed next to the lemon tree sprouts.