Saving Heirloom Plants (or Committing Theft)

This house is the subject of a mystery that has occupied my thoughts off an on for quite some time.  In fact, it began about 9 months ago.  It was around that time that my husband and I noticed that the house seemed to be vacant.  Prior to that, although I never happened to see people around the place when I drove by, there was movement in the form of hoses that were dragged from here to there and plastic flowers that were placed in vases nailed to the fence posts along the barbed wire fence.  Several months passed.  No lights ever burned in the house at night.  The weeds and grass grew several feet tall.  The fake flowers faded and blew away.  I began to covet the sweeties (old fashioned tazetta narcissus) growing along the fence that had cheerfully bloomed and were slowly fading away as their blooming season ended.  We concluded the folks that lived in the house had died, poor things.  I continued to covet the sweeties, so my husband snuck onto the property and dug up some of the bulbs as a surprise to me.  I was thrilled.  I planted them knowing that, even if everything else dried up from the heat and drought, we had saved these heirlooms. 

Months passed.  The house began to look more and more neglected although on occasion a man could be spotted out in the pasture tending to the cows.  Okay, time to take more plants.  I wanted to explore the property.  So, on Sunday we drove over there with a shovel so that I could walk around and look for plant treasures.  It was eerie!  I kept looking at the windows expecting someone to be peering out at me.  What could have happened to these people?  I'm sure that someone died, but why hadn't a child or relative come over to clear out the house?  There was a trash bag on the back porch, the barbecue grill was sitting out on the back lawn, there were rugs hanging on a clothes line.  It looked like someone was living there one day and the next day, without preparation of any kind at all, they were gone.  Wasps nests and spider webs cover the doors.  It's such a mystery!  Did these people (or this person) have no one in the world to come behind them and clear out the house?  The barn, the sheds, the garage are all full of wonderful stuff.  Hoses are rolled up and hanging on nails - everything is out in the yard as if someone was in the house, not put away as if someone was going to go on a lengthy vacation.

I dug up some bulbs ( I think they are Johnson Amaryllis) and some bearded iris (probably Cemetery Whites).  There is a well behind the house.  This house was built before indoor plumbing.  I'm determined to explore the place more fully.  In the mean time, my husband will ask the mail man if he knows what happened.  I'm so curious.