Chef Jeff, You Have Disgraced Yourself

Lo, all those many months ago when the Spring, tra la, was full of promise and the sun shone brightly and birds sang while gentle breezes wafted the new leaves of the trees to and fro, tra la, I made a trip to the hardware store.

Tra la.

And at the hardware store I purchased the following:

1. One premium Chef Jeff cucumber plant
2. One premium Chef Jeff sweet red pepper plant
3. One premium Chef Jeff sweet green pepper plant
4. One premium Chef Jeff Early Bird tomato plant
5. One premium Chef Jeff Early Girl tomato plant
6. One premium Chef Jeff Better Boy tomato plant

And suffering the jeers and sneers of Hubster, who has seen me try and fail before in the gardening area, I planted all of the above.

In my front flower bed.

For the whole world to see.

Tra la, tra la, tra la.

I got a bumper crop of tomatoes on one plant. The squirrels and rabbits ate very well indeed. In fact, I would say they probably had over twenty tomatoes just off of that one plant if you count the blooms they knocked off and the branches they bent trying to get to all the tomatoes they could reach while I wasn't around.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Oh no, not at all.

But then we come to the rest of the plants.

The pepper plants have produced nary a pepper. I don't really blame Chef Jeff for this one, because it seems my friends the rabbits are partial to the leaves on the lower part of the pepper plants and the blossoms. It's hard to make a pepper when you don't have a blossom.

Then there's the cucumber plant. The cucumber plant that grew to a length of about 8 inches, then died. Deader than a doorknob. No nibblers.

And the other two tomato plants. One has never put out a single, solitary tomato to this date. Not one. The other produces tomatoes that have seams and tend to rot before they ripen. Not even the squirrels will eat them. They look, frankly, like some sort of genetic mutation gone very, very wrong.

And I'm wondering if Chef Jeff is trying to pull a fast one on me here.

I mean really, if you're so busy cooking all the time, where do you find time to run a plant business? And if your main focus is on preparing food, it's obvious you can't be as dedicated to providing quality greenhouse plants to deserving customers like me, now isn't it?

Shame on you, Chef Jeff.

Shame. On. You.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

But hey, thanks for giving me someone to blame it on this year.

Tra la.