Garden thieves

Yesterday morning the mayor of our village came and rang our bell. She's a neighbor. I was in the kitchen, which has a window right over the front gate. I went downstairs to talk to her.

"Did you see any unusual activity this weekend?" she asked. No, I said. Mme G. and her husband had been out of town for a couple of days, and last Friday she asked us to keep an eye on her house and yard while they were away. So we made a point of walking over there and around the property morning and evening, with Callie, on Saturday and Sunday. Everything was quiet and looked normal, as far as we could see.

I ate a cherry off this tree yesterday. It was nearly ripe.

"Somebody came and stole my tomato stakes and all our zucchini plants out of the garden," she said. Can you believe that? The yard isn't fenced in, and it's back off the road. It's not exactly secluded, but it would be easy for somebody to do things over there without being seen by any of the neighbors. I'm about 95% sure that the tomato poles and zuke plants were still there Sunday morning when I walked through.

The plums are getting big on trees all around.

The tomato stakes (those spiral-shaped ones like the ones we and so many people have here) are not expensive, and of course zucchini plants aren't either. The incident is more an annoyance than anything else. I want to ask M. and Mme G. if this is the first time their garden has been pilfered. If it's not the first time, it could be that somebody besides us is watching their place and knows when their garden will be easy pickings.

Peaches too.

Meanwhile, I'm going down to Preuilly-sur-Claise today to see and have lunch with Simon and Susan of Days on the Claise. It takes about an hour to drive down there, and I'm going with a couple of friends from Saint-Aignan. Walt is staying home because he is on Roland Garros duty this week. He wouldn't want to miss a good backhand or a double-fault...

What do you suppose these two are up to?

The weather yesterday was hot and humid, and kind of partly cloudy. Last night we had a thunderstorm, but the main part of it seemed to stay south and east of us. Hail was a danger but we didn't get any. We got more rain, though, which makes May 2009 one of the wettest months we've had in the past 6 years. It looks like it might rain some more this morning.