The news from When Pigs Fly Farm

When Pigs Fly Farm is EXPANDING!

In between building rockin' tomato fortresses, getting on Facebook and producing potentially viral gardening videos, Farmer Jim has staked out and is currently excavating When Pigs Farm 2.o.


WPF 2.o will be ready for occupation Summer 2012. Make your reservations now.

In other news:

The tomatoes survived four consecutive days of 70-degree sunny weather, but have now returned to their miserably normal state: Rain, cold and general dankness.

They're a pathetic looking lot, aren't they? But I have faith in them.

Sort of.

The arugula, carrots and fennel seem fairly oblivious to the general climatological cruddiness and are perking right along, and speaking of 2.os, Romaine 2.o has arrived.

Stay AWAY, Bastardly Birds.
And I MEAN it this time!

Over on Farmer Jim's side of things, he's got dill and onions in, lettuce looks good and his peas are simply p.r.e.c.i.o.u.s.


And, oh, while my corn is no way as high as an elephant's eye (more like a sheep dog's eye) -- WTF!! did you say corn??? -- Why yes. As a matter of fact I did.


I did not grow said corn myself. I paid cold, hard cash for it at Liberty Park Florist, Bermtopia's go-to nursery for already-big-vegetable-plants-since-no-way-hell-can-you-start-with-little-ones-because-of-our-freakin'-45-minute-growing-season-here. So the corn is in.

I am expedient if anything.

And, this week, I can't give my gardening report with a word about The Back Forty, my perennial project (literally and figuratively) at the Nine-One-Four. Welcome to the garden.

Peonies, daphne and lilacs, oh my.

The Wonderfully Patient Spouse gets a big shout-out here for almost single-handedly completing the Great Back Forty Clean-up of 2011. I think he might have knicked a couple cone flowers in the furor of his weed abating, but I won't tell the WPS if you don't.

(Note: I wasn't a complete lump in the clean-up process. Yesterday, I took on the taming of our 7-foot yellow shrub rose. Seventy-five scratches on my arms and one puncture wound to the inner thigh later, I can report he is tamed.)

(Sort of.)

And Ben? He has been of no use whatsoever in the garden. His "contributions" amount to this:

Yes, another hole.
Which the sparrows have now appropriated as their summer dust bathtub.

and attempting to entice us into playing ball with him by discreetly and delicately placing soggy soccer balls between our shoulder blades as we weed.

The news from When Pigs Fly -- no, wait, make that -- Plastic Bag Farm

For those of you who live to play "Where's Waldo?" what is wrong with the picture below?

Exactly.

My row of initially-reluctant-but-gamely-giving-it-a-try-at-growing romaine lettuce is gone-baby-gone. Courtesy of some cheeky bird if the quasi-surgical pinpoint holes in the ground are any clue.

Little bastard.

Other than that: Farmer Jim got all frisky and planted tomatoes last week. They're dead-baby-dead.

But check out the nifty tomato fortress he's constructed.
No more frozen tomatoes on Farmer Jim's watch.

(Note: He can do things like this because he is An Engineer.)

And look how adorable Farmer Jim's radishes are.

So, of course, inspired by Farmer Jim's initiative, I got all frisky and planted tomatoes this weekend. Our little living room buddies were sending off vibes that life on the ottoman was no longer fun. So, fine, into the ground they went.

They are, no doubt, doomed.

It's so cold here, Bermtopia. So very, VERY cold.

But wait! The great plastic bag tomato fortress!

We ARE a good looking lot, aren't we?

And in case you're wondering, the weekly weather forecast is, you guessed it, cold, wet and dank. I'm not sure those plastic bags will be coming off any time before July 2014.