Worth Stealing? Apparently.

          A common thief alerted me to the seductiveness of the human senses. One early autumn about two years ago, I happened to see her pacing in front of my neighbor's hedge. The sun was setting as the woman studied the front of the house. After a quick glance over her shoulder, she stopped at the far corner of Roger's lot and reached into the branches of a tree that stood there. Then just as suddenly, the woman disappeared down the sidewalk.

          I have to admit that I had been living in my own home for nine years and hadn't paid any attention at all to that sprawling, rangy tree.

          My interest was piqued. With the sun almost down, I couldn't really see a whole lot as I approached the tree. But then a musky perfume hit me like a dense cloud. The heavenly odor was definitely tropical, and most likely meant fruit. It was almost intoxicating.

          Over the next few days, I noticed Roger's nurse picking the fruit to take inside to her charge, who was well into his nineties. She told me they were guavas. Rather than steal from the elderly man, I immediately made a trip to the local nursery and purchased my own yellow guava tree. It stood about three feet tall. I planted it in the middle of an island of grass in my front lawn, surmising that it would do well there since Roger's tree was only forty or so feet away and was thriving.

          Three days later, my tree was gone! It had literally been plucked out of the ground, leaving a concentric hole where it had once been planted. No need to rack my brain in regards to who the thief might be. Too bad I had no clue where she lived. She wasn't a regular in the neighborhood.

          Back to the nursery. I purchased a slightly larger red guava tree, guaranteed to produce large oval gems with a juicy red flesh inside. I planted it closer to my house, slightly screened by an old Chinese magnolia that was on my list to have removed within the next year.

          The first year, the small tree produced a half dozen or so fruit, complete with the delicious red flesh.

          This year the small tree is branching upward and outward since the towering magnolia has been removed. As the summer heads toward its end, there are tiny green fruit on its branches, which will ripen in late September.

          Hopefully, the thief will stay home and pick guavas from her own ill-begotten tree.