My operation is thriving + the arrival of the "mystery hose"

As you can see, I am not messing around. The hillbilly garden currently contains a lettuce drawer, a jalapeno pepper, the Yukon Gold potato pot, two cherry tomato plants, one large-ish tomato variety, some strawberries and the chive tray up top. I'm guessing I probably crossed the dirt-claiming boundary at my apartment building awhile back, but until I hear otherwise, this earth is mine.

So far everything seems to be going pretty well. My lettuce had been choking itself off a bit, and I cut it back and now it appears to be doing pretty well. Still harvesting some outer leaves about once a week, making some delightful little salads. The leaves at the bottom of the potato plant are turning yellow, which my farmer friend Marven says means that the little spuds are developing. He even said that I could start digging some out, but that could go horribly wrong in a number of ways, so I'm going to hold off.

And then there's the mystery hose. I can't be sure that the following two incidents are linked, but I've read enough formulaic popular fiction to secretly hope that they are.

So. A couple of weeks ago the lettuce was looking kind of haggard, and I decided (or Google told me) that it might have been getting too much direct sunlight, so I rigged up a cheap umbrella before I left for work in the morning to give it some shade. I didn't really see a reason anyone would want to steal it, but after a couple days, I returned home from work to find it gone. This was discouraging.

But then yesterday, I came home to find a small length of what appears to be a new hose on my steps. Since I often make about 7 trips out there with my watering can, it would prove to be helpful... if there was an outdoor faucet to attach it to. Which there is not.

This raises some questions.

#1: Did the umbrella thief just trade me for a hose?
#2: Is some creepy person watching me water my plants?
#3: Was this hose even intended for me?
#4: Who put the fricking hose there?!
#5: Where the %&*# is my umbrella!?!?!?