Just maybe.
OK, so remember the gnome that suddenly appeared in my yard the other day? I thought it was weird – I mean, it was way in the back of my gated-off backyard, and it’s not exactly the kind of thing that blows in with the wind, so someone had to have put it there. But it could have been…I don’t know, a kid messing with me? Maybe? That seems unlikely, but…it’s possible, I suppose.
Anyway, it was weird.
And then, not 24 hours after my gnome discovery (and the Scary Baby In Corner incident that very nearly made me pass out), I was looking out my window and, in almost the exact same spot where I’d found the gnome, I spotted this:
And I freaked out.
Because that is most definitely not mine. And excuse me, that is not “discarded” or “blown” in any way; that is planted. Somebody put that there. Which means that somebody came into my yard in the night. And it is quite possible that that “somebody” was a ghost, because all it takes for my dogs to lose their shit – loudly – is for a leaf to fall to the ground or for a squirrel to exist somewhere within three hundred yards of their face; forget about a stranger physically coming onto our property and doing things like digging.
So I called my neighbor, and I called the guy who came a few days ago to do some work on my house, and I called my friend who came over last week – just to see if any of them had left me some surprise gifts and had somehow neglected to also leave any kind of note indicating, you know, “Hi, just left a gnome and a sun-thing in your backyard.” Nope.
I worked myself into a state that concluded with me deciding that was was going to have to happen was that I was going to sit awake in my sunroom all night long armed with a flashlight and Virgil, awaiting the arrival of a gnome-wielding ghost and then doing…something. Hopefully something heroic.
And then, around mid-afternoon, I got on a Skype call with Kendrick (who was still in India at the time) and related The Saga Of The Gnome to him, and he said, all light and breezy and no-big-deal: “Oh, you found them!”
…Excuse me?
Apparently he left the gnome and sun for me as presents a few weeks ago, and then it snowed, and the snow only just melted enough for me to see them. And apparently I was so floored by the gnome discovery that it took me a full day to notice the other completely unfamiliar item located in our backyard…right next to it. Which, yes, makes for an unfortunately (or fortunately) anticlimactic ending…but still, I have to say: pretty relieved over here.
Also excited to have a husband back in residence. In case that gnome gets any ideas.
