Arlington Texas doesn't like organic gardening or gardeners

The Garden of Eden organic gardeners were getting grief from the city of Arlington TX.  They were cited for "grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises."  Well, now you can certainly understand Arlington's urgency in correcting this problem. So now you can understand why the police carried out a raid with a SWAT team complete with drones and aircraft circling the area.   The police seized "17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants ... native grasses and sunflowers."  Eventually they produced a search warrant that claimed they were seeking cannabis plants and the resulting harvest for distribution.  This makes perfect sense because organic gardeners are all hippies and that means "drugs".  Of course they had no evidence to back up their warrant and found nothing going to pot other than maybe the house siding.  Several things are clear here.  SWAT cops don't know crap about plant identification, so they are the real dope in this story.  Smoke that okra boys, or better yet the tomatillo leaves.  TPP looked for a link to  the 24 8x10 glossy photos  with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each explaining what it was about.  Ultimately, only a single arrest was made based on unrelated outstanding traffic violations.  During the 10 hour raid the residents were handcuffed because they were dangerous criminals and all.  Did they take away their shoe laces so they couldn't hang themselves?  Looks like Arlington TX knows how to violate peoples' rights, or they really really don't like organic gardens and gardeners. 














 



 

About okra

Yesterday's trip to our local farmer's market held no real surprises: peppers were rebounding, tomatoes, except maybe cherry tomatoes, were shot, fall crops were coming into season, and people had a lot of okra for sale, and sadly, most of it was not worth buying.  The reason for this is simple; it was all too mature.  There are a number of fruits that we usually eat as vegetables that are only edible when immature.  The mature fruits are inedible.  Okra matures into a hard, dry capsular fruit that splits open along 5 seams to release its seeds.  As long as the young fruits are elongating, they are soft enough to consume, but once they reach their mature length, they become fibrous very quickly, and okra grows rather quickly so you must pick any pods more than an inch long once a week.  This is the zucchini lesson all over again.  Pick them young!  But vendor after vendor had great big old things as if large size were a virtue.  Hmm, no image of okra in the files, especially a mature fruit, but here's a nice image of an okra flower.  The flower is a dead give-away that okra belongs in the mallow/hibiscus family.

The season and okra in combination remind TPP of one more thing: my suggestion that team mascots be plant names.  Let's add to the ranks of forward looking universities and colleges by introducing the Delta State Fighting Okras!  Yea, go Okras!  Fear the Okra!  Got to get one of those t-shirts!  If the pods start to sprout arms, they're too old to eat.