From the Regretsy Forums
This post first appeared on Regretsy on August 3, 2011.
Ant B is an artist on Etsy who is also a member of April’s Army. This is a story she posted in the Regretsy forums a few days ago.
I was heading out to the backyard this morning, when I saw the neighbor that lives in the house behind ours in my yard. He was putting leaves from one of my plants in a shopping bag. I yelled, “Hey!” and he grabbed another plant and stripped it up, taking all the leaves off. By the time I got outside, he had done two more plants and shoved all the leaves into his bag. By the time I got halfway to him, he ran off, carrying the bag.
I inspected the damage. He had stripped or broken off all my okra plants. They hadn’t started producing yet.
I think he thought they were ….not okra.
UPDATE 1:
An undercover cop just stopped by. He took my report. He was going to tell the neighbor to stay off my property but no one answered the door. He said that there was no proof he took the leaves, and that there was no value to them so there was no way to charge him. But we both had a good laugh over it, and he took photos and said he was sure his fellow officers would laugh too.
UPDATE 2:
Just got a knock on the door. A police office stopped by to let me know that my neighbor was arrested trying to trade a baggie of chopped green leaves for a case of beer at a liquor store a few blocks away. According to the store owner, the guy told him the leaves are high-quality home grown marijuana, and when he was arrested, he claimed he stole them from my garden, where I had them hidden in a flower bed.
The police officer that came by was a different one than from earlier, but had already heard the story about the okra thief. He went out with a flashlight, looked at the okra, took more pictures, laughed a lot.
He asked if he could have some okra leaves to take with him, and a tomato from the garden for his dinner. I complied with the police officer’s request.
August 4, 2012 at 1:31 pm
One of my favorite posts ever.
August 5, 2012 at 10:00 am
This story will always be epic.
August 4, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Still one of my favorite stories ever
August 4, 2012 at 1:33 pm
YES! The okra story is one of my favs!
August 5, 2012 at 3:35 am
O-O-O-O-O-O-O-Okra-homa!
Where the wind come sweeping down the plain.
August 5, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Get out of my head!
August 4, 2012 at 1:37 pm
One of the best stories I have ever read, and I also love my okra mug by AntB!
August 4, 2012 at 1:37 pm
I’d consider smoking Okra before eating it.
August 4, 2012 at 10:10 pm
I thought that too, but then I actually had it deep fried with a *tiiiiny* bit of ranch dressing… A little squishy texture at first, but now I actually will order it from one restaurant (that’s all, just one).
August 5, 2012 at 1:25 am
Come down to he South to get some okra done right. Fried okra should not be squishy! It is easy to make too. Boiled okra, on the other hand, it so slimy it could be used as an industrial lubricant!
August 6, 2012 at 9:02 pm
Fried it is wonderful, boiled it is slimey. It gives great flavor to soups, stews and gumbo. I use it a lot.
August 4, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Yup, one of the best Regretsy things ever. Plus, for anyone who doesn’t know, AntB’s pottery is amazing, and her other shop, Second Hand Ceramics, has all kinds of Regretsy stuff, like weasels and stuff.
August 4, 2012 at 4:44 pm
AntB–can we get a link to your work? I heard the word necklace!
August 4, 2012 at 7:28 pm
http://www.etsy.com/shop/AntB
http://www.etsy.com/shop/SecondChanceCeramics
But no necklaces right now. Sorry!
August 5, 2012 at 7:19 am
wow! beautiful stuff!! Favorited for Christmas!!
August 5, 2012 at 7:24 am
Your descriptions have me in tears.
August 6, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Psst. Ask AntB about her fancy tiny houses. They are seriously freaking adorable.
August 4, 2012 at 1:40 pm
I do not remember this, and it’s a great story, so thank you for the repost.
Or as they (all of them) ‘TY 4 teh repost. Lulz.’
August 4, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Good ‘ole tokera.
August 4, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Here’s a nearly as silly but rather opposite true story.
It was the 1970s – of course – and one of my sisters was a bit of a stoner. Tired of paying my brother (really) what she thought was an inappropriate mark-up for pot, she decided she would try to plant some seeds and grow her own. Of course, she decided that the family garden would be the best spot to try to grow her pot (as I said she was a stoner).
Luckily, my mother, who tended the garden, was blissfully unaware of the details of the drug culture (when she found my other sisters pot pipe – short, bright red, plastic – she believed her when she said it was for tobacco) and proceeded to tend for the odd new plants at the end of the corn row. She had a green thumb and with a few months they were five feet high.
After a neighbor and Vietnam vet stopped by and noticed the pot plants and laughed (but didn’t tell my mother) my sister quickly cut them down and dried them in the toaster oven – in the kitchen, after dinner.
August 4, 2012 at 7:01 pm
So, wins all around?
August 4, 2012 at 7:49 pm
So she didn’t realize it’s really just the buds that you smoke ? Plants usually don’t bud until they’re on a cycle of equal sunlight and darkness. Considering you probably don’t live in a tropical climate, I’m assuming that they didn’t actually bud. Did she actually try to smoke the leaves she put in the toaster oven? I would love to see that!
August 5, 2012 at 1:27 am
LOL – I don’t think you would have liked the pot we smoked in the 70s. You were pretty happy if it wasn’t half stems and seeds. Cleaning them out was a hassle and, if you missed a seed, BAM!, exploding reefer.
August 5, 2012 at 11:18 pm
Only the buds? Cycle of light and darkness … what we called day and night back in the 70s? Oregon, Washington, New York and California are tropical, since the stuff quite happily buds, sheds pollen all over ( achOOO!) and sets seed there? Toaster oven vs clothes dryer … oh, never mind. Er, ah, you need to find a different retailer, kid.
August 5, 2012 at 7:21 am
My great-great uncles grew pot in their mother’s corn fields back in the early 40s! They even invented a language so they could talk about the pot, or “tea” as they called it, around her. My family still speaks it…mostly around the kids!
Like a friend of mine says, anything that grows is natural and should be legal.
August 6, 2012 at 9:06 pm
My mom tended to some that I grew in the 70s equally as ignorant. Funny thing is, she wanted to grow some to see what it looked like. I couldn’t tell her she had seen it and tended to it. I got her some seeds so she could try to grow it, but she gave the purse away to a charity, with the seeds still inside!
August 4, 2012 at 1:56 pm
I can’t even believe this was a year ago. I recently got a contact buzz off some spinach but it wasn’t the same. Legalize Okra.
August 4, 2012 at 8:19 pm
Kale/Okra in 2012!
August 6, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Back the fuck up. Kale and Okra on the same ticket? Seems a bit monophyletic to me.
August 4, 2012 at 2:27 pm
In the spring of my freshman year of college (’79), many of the guys in the dorm got inspired to start little flower-pot gardens in their rooms. Since it was a bible college, my own humorous contribuion was to acquire some “seeds” from a guy I worked with and diligently plant them in everyone’s pots. Unfortunately freshman boys are lousy gardeners, and by the end of the semester the dead plants were thrown away, none of my seeds having sprouted. I thought. A few guys, having access to the dorm roof, had kept their pots up there, and forgot about them. When the fall semester began, there was a big investigation into who was growing huge marijuana plants on the roof, which could be seen from the street (the dorm was 4 stories high). They never owned up. And NO ONE thought it was funny. Some people just don’t get it, y’know?
August 4, 2012 at 7:12 pm
One thumb for pot in dorms. My friends had their room trashed by local drug dealers because their gro-light operation was cutting into the dealers’s sales. Really, there wasn’t enough demand for everyone IN COLLEGE????
One other thumb because – ’79 freshman class of ’83!!!!
I’m old.
August 4, 2012 at 3:11 pm
I hate okra, but I love this story.
August 4, 2012 at 3:43 pm
I love this story and I also love AntB.
August 4, 2012 at 4:10 pm
Hooray for Tokra!
I’m wearing a necklace from AntB right now.
August 4, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Growing okra? Oh. I thought you said Oprah.
Never mind.
August 4, 2012 at 4:43 pm
This reminds me of a story my dad told me. He was on call when a fellow came in with symptoms of confusion and delirium, and a few other indications consistent with use of magic mushrooms. It turned out that his son had gone ‘mushroom picking’ and left his treats in the fridge. Mom saw them and decided that they’d be delicious with dinner. Long story short, I believe there was a very long grounding for their teenager…
August 4, 2012 at 5:02 pm
This is very high on the list of “Regretsy Greatest Hits” for me–I’ve re-told this story a few times, and it never fails to crack people up.
As with Etsy, just when you think people can’t get any stupider…someone comes along and proves you wrong. Sometimes with okra.
August 4, 2012 at 5:09 pm
BEST STORY EVER!!!! Thank you Aunt B!!!! *snicker*
August 4, 2012 at 7:06 pm
omfg someone needs to learn how to use Google image search. >.< I hope your molested okra recovers.
August 4, 2012 at 7:28 pm
I love smothered okra. This story is funny as hell though.
August 7, 2012 at 6:07 pm
This reminds me of a story my mother loves to tell.
Her mother – my grandmother – didn’t really teach her to cook. My mom learned somewhere, but it wasn’t from Grandma. In the early 90s, my mom had to go stay with her for a while, and during that visit was ordered to smother okra for supper.
My mother found a pot, threw the okra in, slapped the lid on, and held it on tightly while standing in the middle of the kitchen.
Grandma: “What ARE you doing?”
Mom: “Smothering the okra. Do you think it’s done yet?”
Grandma… was not amused. They stuck to eating out the rest of my mother’s stay…
August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
I sort of remember commenting on this when it was on the forums. How time flies when you’re having fun! It’s still one of my favorite stories.
August 4, 2012 at 8:25 pm
That reminds me, I want to make some okra pickles. A local favorite uses smoked paprika, so they are called (drumroll) “Smokin’ Okes.”
When I take some out for Thanksgiving, this story will be a great icebreaker at dinner!
August 4, 2012 at 10:45 pm
Ah, memories!
That one time I got deep fried on Okra…
August 4, 2012 at 11:02 pm
If some idiot offered me okra leaves and call it pot, I’d give him some pee in a bottle and call it beer. Fair trade.
August 5, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Oh and I am not a native speaker, so forgive me any possible misthingathingings. Thank you!
August 5, 2012 at 6:07 am
Haha… my Japanese maple has leaves that look exactly like pot except the leaves are red. I’m suprised this hasn’t happened to me.
August 5, 2012 at 6:29 am
Wait a second. “there was no value to them so there was no way to charge him.” Vandalizing someone’s garden is not a crime? That doesn’t sound right.
August 5, 2012 at 11:19 am
Oh haha I love this one.
Silly Okra dealers.
August 10, 2012 at 10:22 am
Woah woah wait, no proof and no value?! You had an eyewitness that saw him steeling /destroying food from your garden! Would it be okay if he came into your kitchen and stole or destroyed okra you’d bought from the store?