The ABCs of cutting okra

Brenda McCann said she likes fresh okra so we struck a deal. She would pick our plot while Regina and I were away for two weeks.

But Brenda discovered she didn’t want okra every other day, and you know what happened. It was like not milking Bossie every day and expecting her to produce a gallon on demand.

We returned home to see pods as long as cow horns protruding from stalks, and the ground littered with pods too hard to slice.

Brenda confessed that okra eating, not okra picking, suits her temperament better.

Hers was a tale of woe that began with the serrated knife she used on her first attempt to cut the okra. That didn’t work, so she went home for the garden snips. But most of the okra was hard and she trashed it.

I think she tried twice more to gather the okra and each attempt met with disaster.

Unseen ants from the plants made a sneak attack on her hand, leaving her with stinging bites.

Her next attempt was with gloves for protection from the ants and the hairy fuzz on the okra.

Brenda, however, didn’t count on the mosquitoes that bombarded her. She fled again and the okra went unattended for about a week.

“I just said to heck with it,” she said. And the okra apparently felt some of those same stirrings. It’s now decided to hibernate until the first frost claims the stalks.

I should have given Brenda on-the-job training after Daily retired Weekend Editor Ken Retherford butchered the patch several years ago.

“I thought I knew how to cut okra,” he said. Ken tried only once, and the okra grew unimpeded for nearly two weeks.

Next time I offer okra-on-the-stalk, the invitation will come with written instructions.