Cleopatra's bath & the floret stealers

I turned the air conditioner on full bore and left the lounge room to change and go and paint in the study. It was a hot day outside but I was lovely and cool with my new split system air conditioner (no more sweltering for me when the humidity got the better of my evap cooler on the roof).

About an hour later I took a break, and went to make a cuppa, glancing into the Lounge Room on my way. To my shock and horror the Lounge Room now looked like a mystical scene for Act 3 Cleopatra's Bath!

I had been drying out rose petals from my red rose over the past few weeks in two chinese bowls on my coffee table in the Lounge Room, slowly turning them so they didn't go mouldy. They are handy to put in the vacuum cleaner in Summer and give it a waft of roses. However, the coffee table is directly under the air conditioner, and by turning it on full all of the rose petals had taken flight and hundreds and hundreds of them were all over my cream coloured carpet - making it look like a creamy bath with floating petals! Ugh! I had to pick up every single one, except the last twenty or so, which I sucked up with the vacuum cleaner!

****
On my early morning walk I came across two Indian ladies. One had a material bag and the other was removing pink florets from an Oleander bush and stuffing them into the bag. They were up in someone's unfenced front garden.

I was in two minds whether to say anything. They looked guilty and I knew neither of them lived there; having seen the owners before, and knew one of the ladies lived a block away. However, it was 6am and I was on my walk.

I procrastinated for a bit; should I tell them that Oleander is extremely poisonous and by taking those florets off like they were with their bare hands could result in illness, or if children or pets were to touch the florets later they could really get sick or die.

However, by the time I came out of my thoughts I had passed the ladies and their stolen bundle. I decided that if you decided to steal you have also decided to take on any consequences that that entails.