Thanks! I wonder where it came from, since I didn't plant it....My entire front garden was nothing but lawn before my husband and I dug it up and now we've got things growing that I didn't plant. Keeps life interesting!

It is a Bromeliad, but there are so many. Keep the leaves wet and the roots quite dry, or at least in very well draining soil, which is usually not potting soil. Better to keep it in bark chips and water it from above. The "red spear" is the flower stalk. The flowers are small blue or yellow (usually, other colors more rarely) things that will come out from between the scales and last for one day. The red spear will last a very long time, and the plant producing it will slowly die. Usually small plants will form at the base of the original plant and produce the bloom for the next year.

Hot Lips took a big winter hit here in New Jersey, of the approximately 15 two year plants just 6 survived. I wonder whether it was the cold in January that took so many microphylla and greggii sages or the very unseasonably cold snap at the beginning of March - I suspect the latter.

Those are berries of a Hypericum (St. John's Wort) plant. Hypericum berries