Pants on Fire

Okay, so I lied.
I've been doing it all my life, so you shouldn't be surprised.
And you aren't if you know me at all.
My mother didn't call them "lies," she called them Greg's stories. The problem for her, was, the stories I told on her and her sisters were true, if embarrassing, while the ones I told about an old pump out in the field that sent messages to a local Native American tribe were created simply to entertain my cousins, who would tend to buy just about anything if you added enough cheese.
That said, I gained quite a reputation around the family, if not the neighborhood, township, village, county and state, to the point where I wasn't called for jury duty until I was 53.

I did identify with Pinocchio.

I think, still, the best one I told was in the confessional one Sunday morning. Two things got me into this mess: 1) I didn't have any good sins for the week, and, 2) I had seen Perry Mason the night before which featured a very dramatic courtroom confession.

Though the details are hazy, My confession had something to do with killing somebody and tossing his body off the train just outside of Shanghai. Lord, you woulda thought I had killed the Pope's dog! The next thing I knew, I was being held by the collar, bouncing up and down like, well, a marionette, listening to an ancient priest scream "blasphemer!" while my mother wailed in the congregation.

My sisters shrank away, my brother burst out laughing (getting a slap to the back of the head for what I thought, anyway, was the proper response) and my Dad snuck out the side aisle for a cigarette.

Anyway.

Back to the subject at hand. I lied to you, my faithful readers.

Last week, or some short time ago, I wrote about the last harvest for Mr. Bitterman's Garden, circa 2018, I showed a few tomatoes and peppers and said, that was it.

​I lied. I wasn't the last, very last, harvest.

What I had forgotten about were the Sweet Potatoes. Protected from the freeze, aided by the snow, the little devils just kept chugging along until we plucked them yesterday during a yard clean up. They were meant to be a side dish for dinner, but became the main course when the filet mignon I had bought to grill smelled like a cross between liver and ammonia. 

Two bites in on the steak and I was done, finishing up with sweet potatoes, salad and grapes.

And the sweet potatoes were perfect. From our own little garden and perfect.

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​They may look like baby mice, but I can assure you they are Sweet Potatoes.

Up next is the ritual "Cleaning of the Garden," followed by the "Tilling of the Soil" and the "Placing of Winter Fertilizer" buried under 4-6 bags of Cow and Compost, provided by my year old cow, Eloise.
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Eloise.
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She even bags it up for me! You can't beat that! Furious George Flings His All Over the Place!
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Meanwhile, I'm also in search of a new gardening hat for next season. Both of the above are in the running, but I'm leaning toward the porkpie hat, as it comes with vodka and less chance of being struck by lightning for impersonating Il Papa, Bouncing down the aisle of a church like a marionette was enough for an entire lifetime. I can forgo being blasted to atoms over a hat. 
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Although a Civil War kepi is always a possibility.