Pigeon Woman

There's a homeless woman who lives next to the florist in the square beneath our bedroom window. Every morning at dawn she rises from the collection of cardboard boxes where she sleeps, and has a smoke.

Then she puts on her shoes...

...as the neighborhood pigeons congregate. Because they know what's coming next.

The woman retrieves a bag of bread from one of her boxes...

...and feeds the pigeons.

Then she puts all her boxes together in a way that probably only she understands, and stashes them somewhere in or near the florist's shop. They are always gone by the time business gets underway. She must have some kind of agreement with the owner.

She brings them back out again after dark.

During the day she patrols the neighborhood, always dressed in a fairly heavy hooded coat, sometimes talking to herself. Once she got agitated in the middle of the night and began yelling an internal dialogue, pacing on the square. It was loud enough to wake me up. But usually she's quiet and she seems to be accepted. She's been there for years -- longer than we've lived here.