The Rosemary Thief

So I'm working from home today and I think to myself, as long as I'm here I can get something really nice started for dinner. I have some lovely cuts of filet. But I'm big on marinating, and I'm VERY big on using rosemary in my marinade, and I am equally big on not paying $3 for a package of rosemary, most of which will go bad before I have a chance to use it, at the grocery store. Not when there's rosemary growing wild everywhere but in my kitchen.

I did try to grow my own herb garden once. I was delighted to watch the tiny little buds poke up from the soil. I told my friend it was like playing God on a very small level. And so, like Frankenstein for his monster, I was smited for daring to think such a thing in the form of a bunch of tiny, gross bugs that invaded and destroyed my young plants. Disgusted, I threw them all out and that was the end of that. So now I'm forced to steal.

There are numerous rosemary bushes growing randomly around my urban neighborhood. Apparently rosemary can grow just about anywhere, including in cement, as long as it's not under my jurisdiction. But I decided to aim specifically for the bush in the nearby preschool's garden. First because the fact that it was planted deliberately and by innocent children made it seem somehow more pure and less likely to have been peed on, and second because this bush rivaled the man who is in the Guiness Book of World Records for greatest girth. I figured nobody would miss a teeny tiny sprig, just enough to season my steaks.

I know it seems ridiculous to get this worked up over stealing some bits of plant but there are a couple of reasons for this. Wrong-doing just doesn't come naturally to me. I am way too paranoid and neurotic. Once when I was about five I stole a pair of Barbie shoes from my babysitter's daughter. I was up for weeks fretting that I'd go to hell. Plus there's the fact that people around here apparently take plant-stealing extremely seriously. The building next door to ours has these gorgeous blooming bushes - I couldn't tell you what they are - I can barely tell the difference between a rose and a daisy - and these nasty signs posted all over threatening incarceration and punishment up to and including death if you pick any of them. The preschool garden doesn't post threats but they don't need to. Who would be a big enough asshole to steal from preschool children?

The same asshole who, in an attempt to cure her self-imposed paranoia and try to get a little charge out of life, has developed a tendency to steal fake grapes from art emporiums. Don't ask.

I brought the dog along as a cover. Hum-de-dum just walking the dog and whoops! Accidentally cut off some of the rosemary bush with the scissors I just happen to have in my pocket. I'm not a thief by nature, I swear. It practically FELL into my hands and I didn't want to litter so I'll just take it with me...

(An aside: If I have no qualms about using the dog to help me steal herbs from children, I could be headed down a slippery slope. I'll be one of those white-trash women who use their baby strollers to smuggle food out of the grocery store. It's a short step from rosemary to an entire frozen chicken.)

I have to cut through a small park to get to the community garden. Theo, who does not understand stealth, started barking like a lunatic at a large German Shephard mix (she also doesn't understand size ratios) just as I drew out my scissors. My heart started hammering like crazy. A courtroom flashed before my eyes. ("But, judge, marinade is so DULL without rosemary! Anybody would have done it!") Hastily I shoved the scissors under the flap of my coat and started gazing around me in the most obvious and cliche display of wrong-doing. At least I didn't start whistling.

Once Theo calmed down, and I waited for a few pedestrians to make their slow way along the path, I pulled the scissors out again and selected a choice stem. As soon as I'd snipped and shoved it in my pocket I looked up to see several solemn-faced children staring at me from the park. It's very possible they were staring because I am so beautiful, or because of Theo, or because that's just what kids do. But it freaked me out and made me feel tremendously guilty. However, it's not like I could re-attach the stem of hot rosemary so I tried to just look like I had a perfect right to steal from the garden and started back down the path.

Which is when I saw the sign: "This garden is donated by the children of Sunshine Daycare to the community of South Lake Union."

Hurray! I'm not going to hell after all! At least, not because of the rosemary. But I can explain that thing with the grapes...