The pumpkin thief strikes again!

Last week's great weather brought us to the garden more often.  We have cleared a lot of the weeds so most of the time, we go there to do a bit more weeding (that's a never ending job) and checking up on our maturing harvests.  So, we know exactly how many potato plants are flowering, how many carrots are in a row and how many pumpkins are developing.  We've even taken some pictures to track their growth.

Then, last Saturday, a rude shock greeted us.  Our fence has clearly been damaged.  It looked like it had been kicked or pushed down.  Some sections of the fence even had parts broken and screws whacked off.  But someone had tried to cover up the damage by propping up the broken fence with some wooden planks.  The gate is also busted.  It doesn't fit well anymore.  Maybe the culprits tried to lift it out of the ground to try force an opening.

My first instinct was to check the pumpkin patch and true enough, the biggest pumpkin has been cut off.  The cut on the stem looks clean and wet, so it might have happened just earlier that day.  The clean cut suggests that it was planned - who would walk around with a knife with them?  Anyway, Pete and I got very upset.  And to make matters worse, someone let their dog take a dump just outside our gate and didn't pick up the poop.

The pumpkin on Monday.

The pumpkin on Wednesday.

Gone!

We were simply too upset and disappointed to be angry.  We were disappointed enough to be thinking of giving up this plot.  Since we've started gardening here, we've had our first fence ruined and one of the poles stolen, found dog poop outside and even inside our garden, a gardening fork I left there by mistake stolen and vegetables and even whole plants stolen.  Even his mum, who only started her garden in the plot beside us this spring, had her strawberry plants stolen and her huge rhubarb plants ripped out.  She had this ancient wooden chest from 1825 put in an inconspicuous corner of the garden where she would store her tools.  We figured the chest was heavy enough to be left alone but still thieves managed to steal it.  And now this.

Sigh.  Pete and I are now so sad about how this is turning out.  I am usually excited to go to the garden but not anymore.  Looking at it, I don't think we would be able to get any pumpkins or cucumber or butternut squash by the end of the season.  Looks like the thieves would strike first before we could harvest them.  So, we are not going to get our hopes up.  Hopefully, we would at least get to harvest our beans, peas, carrots and potatoes.  

The thing is, the stolen pumpkin is nowhere near ready to be picked.  It's a winter pumpkin and its only the middle of summer.  You can see that it's hardly ripe.  Yes, it's big but it is only maybe half the size it should be.  Why take it?  It can't be eaten.  Anyway, it's better that this happens now.  If this were to happen after I have painstakingly cared for it month after month until its ready and then it got stolen, I would be even more crushed.  At least now I realise that this would probably happen again.  It's hard to accept but that's how it's going to be.

I wonder why the thieves like to target our garden.  Ours is clearly very amateurish and we don't grow much there. Other gardens are so much better than ours with more luscious and plentiful crop.  Why not pick on them?  Why us?  Sigh.

We don't want to give up this plot.  We really enjoy the gardening and enjoying our harvests after that.  And this plot is very big.  But the location, which is right next to the bike and walking lanes makes it very open to unscrupulous people.  If we were to stay, we would need a much better fence but then again, if people are determined to get inside, they would find a way to wreck it.  Well, we'll just have to see how it goes later.  If things continue to go missing, we have no choice but to look for another plot somewhere else.