I have noticed, both here at World Headquarters and at home, that strange fungal formations are cropping up in the garden. I have no idea if that’s affecting the tomatoes or not. Everything else seems to be growing exceedingly well. But here’s the sad photographic evidence:

This is the second set of tomato plants I’ve put out. The first met the same, sad demise. I would ask Betsy about this as her family has planted hundreds of thousands of tomato plants for generations, but she would simply stare at me blankly and remind me that “I don’t stick my hands in dirt on purpose.”

As proof that the rest of the garden is doing well, here are:

Strawberries. Nice, huh?

And:

Blackberries. If the birds don’t eat them, I’ll have plenty for blackberry cobbler.

So, seriously, if anyone has words of wisdom about my failed tomato plants, bring ‘em.

What looks like more fun? This?

Or this? Oh…I’m sorry, I don’t know how that got on here.

I meant this…

The Swine Ball got started in 1981 by some disgruntled Tennessean journalists who were tired of watching the Swan Ball Publicity Committee arrive at the newsroom seeking coverage of an exclusive party almost no one can attend. One must be invited to attend the Swan Ball and hardly anyone ever is…and if you ask for an invitation, you most certainly will never be invited.  But you can just invite yourself to the Swine Ball. Just click here (there will be a bacon bar – more about that in a minute).

Since I have never been invited to the Swan Ball, the following is pure conjecture on my part and not meant to, in any way, represent what truly occurs at Nashville’s most exclusive party. In other words, I’m making all this up. But this is my interpretation of the differences between the two events.

Swan Ball Dress: Ladies spend six months visiting the couture houses of New York, Paris, and Milan to select a custom made gown that costs tens of thousands of dollars and may or may not actually look good on them. Exhibit A. You decide.

Swine Ball Dress: If Target doesn’t have it, you don’t need it.

Swan Ball Jewelry: The Swan Ball has an official jeweler each year who is fervently hoping that the ladies in the $10,000 dresses accentuate them with his or her high-priced baubles. But truth be told, the ladies are all married to exceptionally wealthy, and occasionally good looking, men who have gifted them with more diamonds than Queen Elizabeth owns. They just open their private bedroom safes and grab a necklace and a pair of earrings.

Swine Ball Jewelry: Pop-apart beads are not only acceptable but encouraged. In any event, anything more showy than plastic bangles or crystal earrings is considered tacky and just suggests you’re putting on airs. And pig noses are required and will be furnished at the door.

Swan Ball Entertainment: An internationally known entertainer or band is always the headliner at the Swan Ball. This year, it was Kool and the Gang. Tony Bennett, Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin have also entertained.

Swine Ball Entertainment: A band that plays 1980s and ’90s cover tunes from Kool and the Gang, Tony Bennett, Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin.

Swan Ball Food: Oddly enough, there is no mention of food in all the Swan Ball coverage this year, but I know they have it. I imagine it involves filet mignon, lobster tails and truffles. It’s possible some of the women actually eat it.

Swine Ball Food: Bacon Bar! We’re talking mounds of bacon, including the unparalleled Spiced Bacon Twist. “Bacon Dreams Come True” is the theme of this year’s Swine Ball. Enough said. Plus pulled pork sandwiches and all the fixin’s. Nobody will miss the truffles.

As one of the histories of the Swine Ball put it, everyone gathers to “eat cheap and drink deep.” Somehow, I don’t think that’s in the Swan Ball literature.

Spiced bacon twists

This is tremendously exciting.  I am reviewing my options for the Bacon Bar that is part of the Swine Ball this year. If you live in Nashville, you may know that there is a Swan Ball, which is attended by extremely wealthy people and to which hardly anyone, relative to the size of the city, is invited. And then there is the Swine Ball, which requires that you wear pig noses, participate in a hog calling contest and get pretty sloppy drunk. My kind of party as long as you have a designated driver or a hotel room within walking distance.

This year, my nonprofit is a beneficiary of the proceeds. And since the Community Resource Center is renowned worldwide, or at least within a three-block radius, for our Bacon Wednesdays the Chicks are sponsoring a Bacon Bar. I guarantee you that the sad people attending the Swan Ball who must make do with some catered steak meal would be shoving each other out of the way to get to a Bacon Bar.

Bacon-wrapped cocktail weenies – pork-on-pork love

So here’s what I’ve got so far: bacon-wrapped cocktail weenies; spiced bacon twists; peanut butter, dark chocolate chip and bacon cookies; and what Betsy/Chick II calls Bacon Classic (just your basic cooked bacon unadorned). Yes, I love that part of my job is to stay home and cook bacon.

But I need a couple more options. What have you got for me? Here are the rules. It can’t take a long time to prepare because I’m making all the Bacon Bar offerings myself for 150 people (anyone want a free jar of bacon grease – I’ll have about 20 of them).  And it has to taste good, even sitting at room temperature for an hour or so. No, I am not worried about food safety. Bacon is cured.  And the Swine Ball patrons will already be pickled.

Stacy and Betsy

CRC World Headquarters was a very scary place yesterday. There was organizing going on. A lot of intense organizing.

My best friend, Stacy, is visiting from Chicago and came to help at CRC during the monthly giveaway. Stacy will organize my glove compartment on the way to the grocery store. The last time I visited her, I was amazed to find no papers of any kind stacked anywhere in the house. “Where are all your papers?” I asked her. “Your bills and magazines? Where are they?”

“I have them organized in folders,” she said. Really? Folders?

So I knew it was either going to be a bloody battlefield or Betsy and she would become sisters under the skin because Betsy is just as bad as Stacy. Or, perhaps, I should say just as talented.

It’s not difficult to organize a pallet of toothpaste, but it’s the decorative donations that apparently need some order and symmetry. “Where do you want me to put this,” Stacy asked the first day, holding up a doo-dad. “I don’t care,” I said. Stacy did not realize that I don’t care because I have no say in this matter anyway. Betsy is the one who decides where everything goes.

I am happy to report that Betsy and Stacy got along famously. They organized every section of every table by theme and compatible color. They organized the clothing by type and style. It made my head spin and I retreated to the other side of the warehouse. As I said, it was intense.

Now, let’s get to the meat of the matter. While I am overjoyed that Jeri had a great experience on the set of Nashville, I’m very disappointed in you, Chip Esten, also known as Deacon Claybourne. Why, I am not sure, but your name ended up on the guest list for Oyster Easter, causing me to momentarily go into heart failure. I waited and waited for you, Chip, but you never showed. Some silliness about going home to see your family for Easter. Really? When you could have been doing Jello Shots with me, your greatest fan?

I am giddy with excitement, though, that the show has been renewed for another season.  Since Easter is apparently not an option for you, Chip, we’ll see if we can’t get you to the Swine Ball, in August, which benefits CRC this year. You’d have so much fun at the Hog Calling Contest wearing a pig nose. Really, you would.

Here at CRC World Headquarters, we see a lot of inventive stuff. Along with the truly useful donations like new clothing and household items that are distributed to the needy, we have the Roll Tide toilet paper holder and magazine rack. Who wouldn’t want a toilet paper holder with a giant elephant head on top sporting a Bear Bryant hat?

But wait! There’s more! Another giant elephant head sitting on a box that says “14.” What does that mean? Okay, I looked it up on the Internet. Alabama has won 14 national football titles. I would so want a giant elephant head celebrating that fact sitting on my coffee table. I really would, even though I’m a Volunteer fan. A giant elephant head is so much cooler than a guy in a raccoon hat.

But wait! There’s more! How about a creepy lamp with a Bear Bryant statue on the base?

I like Bear Bryant. I really do. But I don’t want him staring at me while I’m perusing my People Magazine.

But wait! There’s more! How about an Alabama sash and pin?

You can wear it around your neck as a scarf. You can wear it around your waist as a belt. Hey, you can wear it beauty queen style and tell everyone you’re Miss Alabama. Who’s to know?

So when inspiration fails, we turn to Sonic. The bacon cheeseburger, please. Sonic always has crisp bacon. And the nice man who lives in the drive-in speaker never judges when we ask for double bacon. Sonic also has a delicious BLT, but Betsy never orders that because lettuce is not on Betsy’s Picky Eater Approved List.

It’s Betsy’s birthday tomorrow and so after inspecting her bacon cheeseburger to make sure there was nothing green inside the bun, she decided to decorate her sandwich with Cheeto candles. Cheeto’s are on the approved list.

That’s right. Betsy is turning 2 tomorrow. So let’s all wish her a happy birthday. I was thinking about getting her an Easy Bake Oven, but baking is not on the approved list either.

Oh, okay. We did. We are sure the quality of the experience for visitors to CRC World Headquarters will improve because of our giant greeter. He’ll watch over the community garden as it continues to grow (except for one pepper plant that has just been eaten up by some unknown vermin). Maybe he’ll scare the UPS guy or cause an accident at the corner of Omohundro and Visco as an unwary motorist glances over and thinks, “What the heck is that?”

Just another perk of the job here at CRC. Giant frogs. They make us happy.

“I can’t believe we got all these binders for free!” exclaimed Binder Man (whose real name is Uchenna Nonyelu). Believe it. Next time, bring a bigger car.

Last year, at garden planting time at CRC World Headquarters, I purchased one of those hoses with tiny little holes that theoretically lay flat on the ground so as to water the plants and not the surrounding driveway and sidewalk. That was only a theory. In reality, the hose was furiously coiled and probably watered every lawn on Omohundro Place.

The hose sat in the warehouse all winter mocking me. So this is why you sit at the open dock door, contemplating the cement plant across the street. Because it suddenly comes to you that you can use boxes full of binders to straighten out the hose. Modestly, it was a brilliant idea. And it worked!

Here it is. The newly planted garden with the perfectly straight hose. So far, I’ve planted two kinds of tomatoes, three kinds of peppers, lima beans, pole beans and onions. I say this every year, but this year is going to be a banner year for the garden. At least, we won’t drain the Metro water supply.