He lives in an apartment. The closest thing to a planter on his balcony is a portable beer cooler.

Hey, I used a keg tub as a planter in college!!! Hmmmm, maybe I need to drink more beer, it worked pretty good from what I remember.

As an electrician, I would agree with Allen's son. Do not leave a socket open or without proyection if you have the cord plugged in. You can get dirtor worse water in a socket and cause a short. Protect the socket. What I do is put a light bulb that is burnt out and screw it in the socket. I use Christmas lights to protect my lemon trees when it gets really cold -5C or below. I have a string of 25 lights but only 7 actually work and light up, the rest have burnt out. This seems to provide enough heat under a bed comforter.

Thanks Wes,
I don't have enough burnt out bulbs to do that. I have backed off the bulbs enough so they don't light up. All are dry and out of the way of any conductive material. The plug-in is wrapped in poly to keep the rain off. I've looked the whole thing over and all is in fine so far after over a month.

Cheers, Barrie.