Pave Paradise and Put Up A Parking Lot

I apologize to all you, me dear friends, for my absence, but I've been in virtual limbo with computer ills.
Nonetheless, I've managed to scrape down a bit of the road next to J*'s house, and we're just a-waitin' on a bit of gravel. It'll be, yes, a parking lot, soon to be filled with eager customers.
We're opening the greenhouse - uh, that would be greenhouse #2, the triangular one - to the general public this Spring, for to spread the happiness of plants and flowers and such to the world at large.
Come one, come all, and partake in the merriment.
Also, I'm not exactly proud of this, but it's a start.

In other news, greenhouse #3 is skinned, thanks to about twelve dear friends who came over Saturday morning. Thank you everyone! Another thousand square feet to water! Spinach is looking good. Beets are up. Peas are up. 'Taters are in the ground. It must be Spring.

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe

We develop different interests as we move through life, and we often can't identify where those interests originated. Many seem completely unrelated and incompatible, and we file them in different parts of our minds. Some remain completely separate our whole lives, while others intersect in ways we'd have never expected. While an interests in organic farming and German cinema don't exactly seem contradictory, and didn't think they could overlap.
Then I see a documentary where Werner Herzog promises to eat his show if a friend of his actually makes a movie, and, well, the friend actually made the movie. Herzog being Herzog, and the world being completely insane anyway, Herzog's shoe is prepared by none other than Alice Waters. There she was, on the screen, basting the shoe in fresh, local, organic garlic sauce.
Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, but it all seemed a bit twisted. Like finding out that James Thurber liked to work on old trucks, or that Miles Davis liked to hunt for Appalachian wildflowers in the Spring.

We Wanted To Be Eco-Terrorists, But We Couldn't Find A Ladder

It all started when some friends drove out from Asheville. They arrived incensed over an advertisement they'd seen on the side of a barn - an advertisement for a (yet another) housing development.
Incensed they were, not so much because of the development, but because of the gtotesque perversion perpetrated on the American tradition of barn advertisement. We decided we had to do something.
This idea was thrown about, and then that. Most ideas involved spray paint. The ultimate plan was, I must say, beautiful in its complex simplicity. We'd get an old piece of greenhouse plastic, paint it to resemble an quilt square, and and use it to cover the barn sign. Magnificent. We would restore Appalachian tradition to the barn, covering up the objectionable and inevitable future.
I had thoughtfully placed an old piece of plastic on the edge of one of the fields, and we m,anaged to find all kinds of paint. We managed to sketch out a quilt square (thank God for those evenings spent with Grandma) and set brush to bucket.
What we had not anticipated was the amount of time it would take the paint to dry on plastic, especially since it was now the middle of the night and the sun was long gone. We waited, and waited, and waited some more. It was like waiting for paint to dry.
It was tome to seize the inspiration and act, so we draped the (sorta dry) quilt over the car, secured it with a crafty application of electrical tape, and sallied forth.
What we had failed to take into consideration was the haigth of the barn. The advertisement was on the second floor. We had no way to get up there, and so, despite many valiant climbing efforts, we abandoned our mission and headed home. Besides, it was 3 AM and we were hungry.
Thus I now sit before this keyboard of two minds - one, I am utterly ashamed at our failure to achieve our objective and reluctant to even mention it. Two: we tried, and perhaps even this short sketch of our endeavor will awaken in others an appreciation of barn signage and a respect for rural tradtion.
If anyone wants a giant plastic quilt square, I know where one could be had, cheap.