Too close for comfort

It is very disturbing to me that things go missing and things appear in our front yard mysteriously. I think people are getting a little too close to our house… A few months ago, we were seeding some California poppies in 2 small plastic containers. The leaves have sprouted but there weren’t any flowers in bloom yet. We left the containers outside on our front yard planter for some sun. Then one day when we came home from work, the containers disappeared. Someone has taken them / “stole” them. They were just gone, without a trace…

The other day, we came home and noticed a suspicious plastic carton behind our trash shield. Inside the area where we keep all our trash/recycle bins, we saw this blue plastic square carton. Inside the carton was an empty Tide laundry detergent container, an empty apple juice container, and other miscellaneous recyclables. We had NO clue who left it there and why. They just appeared out of the blue. While it is no big deal for us to recycle these things, this is really too close for comfort … and to think about how close to our house this person got when we’re not there, and what else they could have left in front of our house?

So this morning, as I do every Saturday morning, I watered the flowers we have in our 2 planters outside. The flowers are growing quite nicely and we want to keep them alive. But today, I noticed that one of our lavender plants was missing. Yes, missing! The entire plant was gone, pulled out of the dirt. I could hardly believe it. How can a plant gone missing? Yesterday I vaguely remember it was still there. At first I thought the culprit was a gopher, who might have dug from underneath and pulled the entire plant downwards. But Sean said that the traces of dirt & mulch show that the plant was pulled from the top. Then I thought it was probably a dog. If it is really a dog, then the plant itself and the dirt would be messily scattered around the planter. But nope, we didn’t see any of that. Now we believe that a human had done it. Someone shoveled it out. I am sick to my stomach if this is true. Why would anyone do that??

These series of events are both disturbing and annoying. I don’t understand why we are being targeted. Since we are living in the middle of a residential area, and our street is not a main thoroughfare, we think the person(s) responsible are some of our neighbors. Maybe not the “immediate” neighbors but someone who lives closeby. We think we might have to set up cameras… we need to catch these people!