Why do some people treat other people's gardens as their personal private "cutting garden"?
I came home one day to discover a woman in my front yard, inside the fence, with a bag and clippers cutting hydrangeas from my bushes. When caught red-handed, she said that I wasn't home to ask and she didn't think I would mind. I told her that I did mind and to stay out of my yard.
I fight a losing battle with a teen-aged girl in the apartments across the street. She picks flowers as she walks, then tosses them on the ground when she gets tired of carrying them. She knows it is wrong because, when I am out gardening, she picks my next door neighbors' flowers. When my neighbor is out gardening, she picks only my flowers. Once, I told her to stop when she was picking my next door neighbors' flowers and she quipped back that I should mind my own business.
My neighbor said that she told the girl to stop picking my flowers in the presence of her grandmother. The grandmother than yelled at my neighbor that she shouldn't talk to children like that. The grandmother added that, "Flowers are for the people."
I should mention that gardens are very small in coastal LA because of the astronomical cost of land. Coastal fog, strong ocean breezes. lack of sunlight due to closely packed buildings and sandy soil also present gardening challenges. Each flower is tended and eagerly awaited at Chez BadMom. Look at the Lily of the Nile above. Notice that you see buds but no flowers. Here is a close-up.
The roses are apparently safer from opportunists because of their thorns. Some Gerbera daisies last year did not fare so well. They were denuded less than 2 hours after they were planted.
Anyway, I put up this sign and hope it will help. I will not tolerate creeping socialism when it comes to MY flowers.
My grandma would have slapped my behind if I so much as thought about picking someone else's flowers. Not to mention that teenagers should know better.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you need an electric fence?
Perhaps you need an irritating but beautiful flower. Fremontia is a beautiful summer-flowering bush that also has nearly small and skin-irritating fuzz that covers the back side of each flower.
ReplyDeletei sympathize with you. i have two homes and when i am away from my home in the mountains, which has extensive flower, my "friends", a married couple, come help themselves. recently they were caught by one of my neighbors and were confronted, claimed i gave them permission to pick any flowers while i was away, since i was not there to enjoy them...and, a light snow was coming, and they wanted to save them! how ridiculous! who plants and tends a flower garden with the idea that the flowers are for the taking if one is away from one's home or it snows. i'm afraid this may be the end of a "friendship". oh well, it was pretty much a one-way friendship. incidentally, they didn't "save" their own flowers, only mine.
ReplyDeleteLast year we noticed a woman and her little girl walking one of streets in our town picking everyone's flowers on that road they must of had over 30 flowers they picked, they never bothered asking for permission, when a car drove by they started to walk away or try to hide the flowers. This year we saw a grown man walking our road and was picking flowers even going as far as going into everyone's yard and up the drive up right up to their house. Mind you we never had this happen before in our town and I'm thinking this person is either doesn't know better or is casing people's houses.
ReplyDelete