GraceandGravy with a side of life! -

My week has been crazy hectic!! As I was sitting here this morning drinking my coffee, I was thinking I really needed a good laugh today. I decided to go back to an oldie but a goodie y’all! #tbt from my former blog.

I really hope you all get a laugh or two out of this post, and make sure to catch tomorrow’s “4th of July Celebration” post with DIY Crafts and Good Eats!

My poor sweet daddy….Almost 73 years old, has worked so hard all his life and helps us girls thru thick and thin. So when my daddy asks me if my hubsy and I could come up and help him cut okra, of course I said yes.

See my daddy raises a fairly good size garden. And since its just him, we girls reap the harvest. My daddy also cans a lot of what he grows, which again, us girls reap the harvest. I seriously don’t have to buy so many canned items because of my daddy. Normally this time of year we are not having to have conversations about the garden because it is normally dead as a doornail but this summer as been odd. Lots of rain has caused our crops to have a second growth. Now I’m not complaining at all, but its just strange that we are still picking veggies in September, but who don’t like fresh tomatoes right?

My daddy don’t ask for a lot of help, he’s proud like that, but he had shoulder surgery 6 weeks ago which has limited what he can do. But what my daddy failed to mention was that with the rain we have had, the small 18 inch okra plants I normally cut okra from, has turned into a 8-9 ft Okra Plant Jungle. How many of you guys have cut okra from a jungle? Not a glorious job at all. My kids came out to the garden to help get it all cut. After 10 minutes they were itching and whining. Not a mom can we please go in now. But serious whining that made you think they were being killed by The Okra Jungle Tribes.

My daddy says, “It’s good for you to do a little work”. Thats right daddy, it is.

Well the whining continues and the itching gets worse and when I look at them they are breaking out in red whelps, so I have the kids go inside to shower.

That is when I start itching. I’m not talking about a little itch from a bug bite, I’m talking about itching like there is no tomorrow. And I start scratching and I can’t stop. My arms are red with whelps, my fingers are swelling and I have scratched so much I’m starting to bleed. And because the stocks are so tall you have to bend them over to cut the okra from the top, so now my head is covered in sticky okra seeds.

I start having visions of me with a machete running thru the Okra Jungle chopping down all the stocks in sight. And then because my arms are on fire and I start imagining setting the Okra Jungle on fire and saying “burn baby burn”. Then when I think it can’t get any worse, graceful me stumbles and falls into the garden fence but lucky for me some pretty vines growing up the side helps to soften the fall, until my daddy says “Don’t get in that poison ivy growing up the fence”. Seriously Daddy, poison ivy in the garden???

That’s it, I need water and I need it fast. I threw my knife down on the ground.

I didn’t grab my okra or anything Jesus, I just ran for my life. (A little humor from Sugar Brown) (If you don’t know who that is, please YouTube it, like now)

I did just that. Straight to my dads shower where I scrubbed and scrubbed and cried and cried, while my children searched my dads cabinets for benadryl, which he didn’t have, *note to self, buy daddy benadryl.

Finally, I decided nothing was going to help and got out of shower. No way was I putting those okra infested clothes but on, so my daughter went and got t-shirts from my daddy to wear.

About that time, in comes my hubsy who is not looking good at all, because all I see is okra covering his sweaty body.

So hubsy wears a pair of my dads scrub pants home and the kids and I wear a t shirt, yes just a t shirt. No judgement please! So glad we decided to obey all traffic laws. We looked like a bunch of okra pickin hillbillies.

After I got home a took a double dose of benadryl which knocked me into a benadryl induced coma.

So much for “Children of the Corn”. Its now called “Children of the Okra”.

*Stay tuned for the Sequel..Coming Soon