Garden in grass and normal neighbors.

The people next door have put in a garden. The always green acre has been just grass for almost two decades. As far as I can tell there has never been a garden there.

One Saturday in March they off loaded a small tractor and disk. I've seen farm equipment of all kinds. I grew up on a farm in Indiana. This was like the full size disks but smaller. I hadn't seen a plow and since the area they were cultivating had been fully sodded with fescue, I have to believe the plow had done its work before I started watching the area.

A man was on the tractor and a woman stood to the side drinking from a plastic cup through a straw. I had no doubt he was doing her bidding in making the garden. I watched as she walked to the edge of their property at the edge of mine and dumped the contents of her cup on my side. I immediately thought of how good produce from their garden would be later in the summer.

This garden is on a commercial lot and my property is where my business operates. I'm there a lot though; much more than they are.

The mail man stopped by the other morning. He is a nice guy and always has a moment to chat when he sees me. Last week he had been on vacation and the mail man who delivered before he was the regular guy had been the mail man for about 10 years. He moved to another route last fall and said he was retiring soon and would fill in for vacations till then.

I told the regular guy about the vacation sub had been a former regular and that he'd asked about getting cake samples. I explained that I enter cakes in the Kentucky State Fair and make some for my church carnival for practice, as well as for the business next door and in previous year's the mail man. He smiled.

"You wouldn’t be willing take a practice cake, would you?" I asked.

"Well I don't need to eat cake but that would be great."

"You could take it home to share with your family, you know," I said.

"Sure, that's a good idea," He said.

"What do you think; pineapple upside down cake or red velvet?" I asked.

"Surprise me," He said with a grin.

-----

The announcement earlier this week that eleven people living and working in America are spies for Russia was greeted by chuckles for the most part. The statement by the President was not adversarial and Putin said he didn't think the people were Russian. Of course the FBI has been listening in on their phones, watching them move about, hacking their computers and putting bugs in anything they own for years. I have no doubt they are spies. I've always believed that the best spy would not be a James Bond type, but someone who blended in and didn't look or act like a spy novel character.

Another former CIA man said there were probably 50 such couples living quietly, doing the same kind of social networking to learn about and influence what we do, politically.

So now instead of seeing Islamic terrorists in every cab or bodega, we will be suspecting that nice couple at your kid's school, just because they "sound foreign" or act normal.