My Unfortunate Realization

We were trying to clean out the fridge the other night and I realized that there was some okra from our garden that needed to be eaten. We decided to have a truly Southern meal of okra (however, it was not fried, so I guess you can’t call it “truly” Southern), black eyed peas, and cornbread. Kim had never eaten okra before, so I was really hoping to make a good impression of this Southern staple. However, by the time I got through throwing out the okra that had gone bad from sitting too long in our fridge, there was literally, literally, a spoonful of okra for each of us. Mind you, I only started with a handful of okra pods from our not-so-bountiful garden to begin with. The plates looked so pitiful with the okra on them that I just had to take a picture.

The okra that I planted and took care of.

In the same week, our guard brought us another bunch of bananas from our tree. As I looked at our abundance of bananas – so heavy I could hardly hold them – I couldn’t help but think how pitiful our okra crop looked compared to them. The unfortunate part of this is that I actually spent time planting the okra, checked on it often, put fertilizer (goat poop) on it and waited anxiously for the first pods to come out. I didn’t even know that tree in my yard was a banana tree until the first bunch came out on it and I dang sure didn’t do anything to help it produce. It would seem that the plant that I “nurtured” and cared for didn’t produce enough food for Kim and I each to taste it and the plant that I absolutely ignored produced enough bananas for the whole countryside. Moral of the story: I probably should not be a farmer. This is a very sad realization for me.

The bananas that I never touched.