SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
It seems ravens and rabbits are not the only ones shopping in the gardens of local residents this spring.
Yellowknife resident Velma Sterenberg surveys the damage left in one of her gardens after a thief made off with her rhubarb plants and a rare shrub. - Meagan Leonard/NNSL photo |
With the warm weather finally here, Yellowknifers have been busy putting in their gardens, including long-time Dakota Court resident Velma Sterenberg.
An avid green thumb, Sterenberg has multiple beds around her property where she grows vegetables, berries, rhubarb and flowers. She says she locks her greenhouse and puts wire over her berries to deter birds, but always thought her other plants were relatively safe.
Last week, Sterenberg said she was out shopping at Canadian Tire when she received a call from one of her neighbours, concerned about a person digging in one of her garden beds.
Residents of the quiet street have always shared items from each others' gardens says Sterenberg - gladly offering up whatever they are able to harvest that year. She said often, friends or family members will stop by when she is not at home and pick up a few things.
Because of this, her neighbours weren't immediately concerned to see a stranger in the yard in the middle of the afternoon.
"I'm generous with my rhubarb and I give it to my friends ... but if my friends want to come and take stuff they'll send me an e-mail or give me a call," she said. "Amongst the people who grow stuff in Yellowknife, we're always trading and exchanging."
When she returned home, Sterenberg discovered a number of her rhubarb plants had been dug up, along with a rare bush she had shipped in from outside the territory. While both of those items came at a monetary loss she was most disheartened to see her bed of lilies had been haphazardly ripped from the ground and discarded nearby.
"Many of these lilies came from my father who is now dead - he was a champion lily grower and this bed is part of my memory of him," she said quietly. "It really hurt to have this tampered with."
This isn't the first time she has had unwanted visitors to her property, recalling her rhubarb stalks were stolen last year - chopped off clean at the base.
"Last year, I was away for a week or so and I came back and the entire rhubarb - all my stalks were gone. Somebody came through and harvested every single piece," she said. "The way this person went specifically to those patches I would have a feeling they knew where they were going."
Sterenberg's house also backs on to the Frame Lake trail and she says people have started cutting across her property to gain access since the city thinned out the trees and shrubs lining the path.
"We now have a lot more people coming off the trail and coming through our yards," she explained. "They just think it's a shortcut."
Standing in her backyard two days after the incident, Sterenberg was still shaken up. Shaking her head, she said she would have been more than happy to share some of her plants if the person had only asked.
"This person could have knocked on my door and said ...'Can I give you a couple of bucks for some rhubarb?' and I wouldn't have even hesitated," she said. "Now my friends ... are not going to get any rhubarb this year because it's gone. Why would you want to do something like that?"
RCMP media spokesperson Const. Elenore Sturko said the incident is somewhat unusual for the city but encouraged that people be mindful of their neighbours' properties and report suspicious activity to the police.
"Get to know your neighbours and look out for one another when you see something unusual," she said. "Hopefully, this person can have a prosperous gardening season, it's not a long season here and it is unfortunate that someone got them off to a bad
start with this theft."
