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Around 8am, most mornings, I look out the window by my desk to see a strange sight. A guy, dressed usually in non-descript shorts and t-shirt, trudges by carrying a plastic girl doll (like the one you dress up in the same clothes as your daughter) about 2 feet in length by it’s foot. Here’s what I know:

• It is always one of two guys, who work at a nearby warehouse that sells framed art to doctor’s and other professional offices.


• The doll is, shall we say, abused. The hair is matted and looks like it might have been burned, and there are marks all over it from shoes and some sort of violence.


• The guy isn’t running, but isn’t moving slowly – like it’s something he has to do but wants to get it over with.


• The doll wears a similarly abused lace thong (no, I didn’t previously know thongs were made in doll size either).


• The doll is always carried by a foot, like a kid holding a safety blanket.


• The doll lives on a  shelf in the warehouse the guys work at when not performing this lap.


•  While the employees at the framed art warehouse regularly have pep talks in the parking lot, we never see an interaction prior to the trip around both of our buildings.


• The shipping manager and myself are the only ones to have seen this, as far as I know – since we get there earliest in the morning.

Last week, something changed. The bigger of the two guys strode by with the doll wearing no shoes on his stockinged feet, and a construction helmet.

So WHAT IS GOING ON?

OK, I’ve already admitted, along with the shipping manager, that we don’t actually want to know. We suspect it is a punishment doled out on the employee with the lowest sales – some kind of punishment/motivation for working harder for your commission. But seriously, why did the doll have to be abused to create this situation?

I suspect I will never know.

It has been unusually rainy the past two months, which means that the lettuce and spinach in the garden didn’t bolt quite as quickly as most years. All the better to eat salads like the one here: multiple kinds of heirloom lettuce, topped with a nasturtium flower. Nasturtiums are edible flowers, with a spicy flavor. I have a large bush of them, meaning I’m not using even half of what’s there, unfortunately. But there are many bounties of the garden that I do get to take full advantage of: sugar snap peas, herbs of all kinds, collard greens, rainbow chard, onions, radishes, tomatoes (the walls of water from the smart and generous gardener Cynthia made a huge difference – we had ripe tomatoes weeks before most people we’ve talked to), and of course the crop that is like pure gold: basil. This recipe is my standby for pesto I can eat for weeks, it’s so good. Luckily, that is exactly what I’ve been doing after the first cutting – and there are probably two more batches out of what is still growing in the garden. This was exactly the plan for this year: 1 1/2 rows of basil, planted a couple weeks apart in both seed and seedlings, ensuring a summer full of pesto. It is that rare occasion where I got exactly what I wanted. And when I carry the bags full of the basil home on my bike, I cackle like a toothless miner, ready to trade in my gold for a good meal and a good time at the saloon.