| | | | | | Chapter 7 The Fertilizer Hits The Fan (12 Times) | | | | | | | | | I'd heard the expression thousands of times and imagined its unfortunate implications, but I am one of the few people to have actually experienced it. | | | | | | | | | It was a lovely sun-drenched summer's day, and I had just finished cleaning the stalls of Cliff and Clarice, our beloved bovines, and that of a guest nag we were tending while the McBrides were at a chicken-plucking convention in Dayton, Ohio. I had gathered a small pail of the combined bovine and equine droppings that I was intending to spread on the rutabagas and Savoy cabbage patch to aid in their growth, hoping for prizes in the Chezlee, Ont., Parsnips and Arts Fest Produce Contest. | | | | | | | | | Unbeknownst to me, Lucetta, eager for notice, if not first place, in the Original Art division of the same aforementioned Fest, had hand-painted an old sheet, tattered and limp with age, and was drying its fresh and sticky surface with a gi-normous fan that she'd borrowed from the abattoir. To set the scene, perhaps a picture will help, although I hasten to point out that painting was not Lucetta's forte. | | | | |