Put in the work, take home the goods

You shouldn’t have to be a gardener to know the sick feeling when somebody raids you for your produce. Because it’s theft, like any other theft, plain and simple.

Truro resident Olga Cain-McCabe registered that disappointment earlier this week when beets she’d grown in a community garden disappeared.

It kind of ruined meal plans for the senior citizen who, in response to queries from media, noted the kind of work required to plant and maintain a garden.

Harvesting, as most know, is usually the easy part, the reward for all the toil. It’s also exhilarating, to see great results compliments of your own initiative and nature’s co-operation and get to enjoy them at the table. Being denied by the actions of a garden thief would be heart-breaking.

This kind of incident registers at least to a degree on the oddity scale, and so it turned into a well-publicized story in the media.

It’s one that had a happy ending, thanks to the observations of Truro Police Const. Kelly Quinn, who linked a bag of beets tossed by an apparently impaired cyclist to the stolen goods.

The constable retrieved the bag the next day, after hearing of the gardener’s story, and returned the beets to the rightful owner.

Happy outcome, but there remains a troubling element – the thought of freeloaders out there who somehow think lightly of this kind of theft.

Gardens are a common sight in neighbourhoods and through the countryside, alongside crops here and there grown on a commercial scale.

They’re not a free-for-all smorgasbord; like any property they should be safe through mutual respect.

Residents would be well advised to be vigilant about any attempts by the wrong people helping themselves, and report them to authorities like any other theft.

We might also hope anyone caught with his or her hand in the cookie jar would be appropriately ashamed of themselves for being so mean-spirited and thoughtless.

These community gardens are a wholesome opportunity for people – sometimes for a small fee and the cost of seed and implements – willing to get their hands dirty and raise some produce by the sweat of their brow. They’re a great pastime, educational and inspirational.

They’re available to anyone, no call for the five-finger discount.