This week in the garden: Thieves

As a gardener, I have reconciled myself to fighting with nature.  I know that I have to be vigilant against birds who would steal my seedlings and my blueberries.  I suspect that our war with the squirrels will never end.  But I don't lose much sleep over these tiny thieves.  I don't begrudge them a little snack from my garden, as long as they leave some for me. 

Not so with their human counterparts.  Remember these tomatoes? 

This picture was taken the first week of July.  Now, as we near the end of the month, the tomatoes were getting lovely -- plump, orange, and nearly ready to pick.  And someone did pick them, just not us.  A thief in the night. 

As I write this, it sounds ridiculous to raise a fuss about a tomato thief.  But I'm raising a fuss nonetheless.  I just don't understand it. 

A little background: we live in the city, and our backyard is quite shady, so we've mixed flowers and vegetables in a dense little patch in our sunny front yard.  Unfortunately, this puts our precious harvest within arm's reach of just about anyone who wants to lean over the fence and help themselves, which they do with astonishing regularity.

At this point, I should have gotten used to these occasional losses, but I haven't.

For now, I am comforting myself by hoping that the tomatoes from my garden made someone less hungry. 

Comments

[Lindy Parker]

Oh my God, are the tomato thief and the cantaloupe thief the same person?

http://ow.ly/cCe5o

for shame.