August Updates

Well, Dear Readers all know that work in August is kicking my ass, so I won't go into that here. But there have been other happenings as well....

Pele spent most of the month of August, since Kali was allowed to come out of quarantine and socialize, doing this:


But more recently there has been some moves towards, at the very least, tolerance, as evidenced by this:


Still not a lot of friendship while fully conscious, but they actually both slept with us in the bed last night, albeit as far apart as possible.

The garden has also been going gonzo. I had to give away cucumbers, because we had so many. But there has been a lot of garden sadness, too. A damn rabbit ate several of our spaghetti squash and I will now count us lucky if we get four squash from the plant that ate New York. Our maters are at least three weeks behind schedule. If they ever turn, we will have a lot, but we were talking today about if we wanted to buy some at the farm stand in order to make sure we had at least a few bags of sauce in the freezer.

The greater unhappiness has been related to our gorgeous, heavily loaded pepper plants:


Notice anything? Or rather, notice that there is nothing on the plant?

The plants have been loaded, but not quite ripe. Boxer has been wanting to pick them for a couple of weeks, and I was all, "No, no, they aren't ripe yet!" I came home last night and saw with joy that they were ready. So we were planning on picking some today and having baked stuffed peppers this week, with quinoa and sweet onion and maybe fresh sage. I was particularly looking forward to eating the yellow ones with the blush color. My, they looked tasty.

We came out this morning to go and do our grocery shopping and discovered that, during the night, someone had stripped two pepper plants completely bare.

Now these are not the first plant and vegetable thefts we have had. I had two poppies stolen this spring, and sometimes a few cukes would be off the front, particularly those overhanging the sidewalk. But this was two whole plants, at least two dozen peppers completely gone. Inside the fence, at least ten feet from the sidewalk. Including all the blush stuffing peppers, and the red giants, which had not even started to turn red yet.

So, after we got home from our running this morning, we went out and picked everything, even if it hadn't really turned color yet. Why leave them for someone else? And then we went in back, and it appears that someone has also been taking some zukes, which I would actually thank them for, if they hadn't ripped the plants out of the ground. And we were very short on beans, even though I noticed that a bumper crop was coming and and would like be ready for today.

This development has made me very sad. I mean, if someone is truly hungry, I can understand it, just ask and I will give! But the stealing in the dead of night? It also makes me feel unsafe; like I cannot safely leave my house to go anywhere without fear of someone stealing all of my stuff - inside or out. And it makes me feel used, because someone has obviously been watching for these peppers to get ripe so they could come and pluck them.

It makes me wonder if we should have a garden at all. I mean, why put in $400-$500 worth of plants and all if someone is just going to steal everything? We could join a CSA for that amount. Yeah, it might mean less produce than we would get growing our own, but if someone is going to steal it all, we might end up with more from the CSA anyway. Or do we have to grow stuff that none of the neighbors would enjoy? I could try putting everything in the back, but the front is sunnier. I had even thought about moving all the maters to the front, but I won't do that if they are going to get stripped...


What's a sad gardener to do? Damn Pepper Thieves!