“My parents have a large front yard,” writes David in Georgia, “and up until a few years ago, it had about 40 trees in it.” Unfortunately, an arborist informed David’s parents that those trees, while they looked normal enough, had become infested and essentially hollowed-out by insects, killing the trees and turning them into a pretty big safety risk in the case of a storm. At the arborist’s recommendation — and I’m sure, at all no small expense — David’s parents had the trees removed.
Fast forward a few months to December, when the family put up their usual holiday decorations — little trees made of Christmas lights — throughout the front yard. Soon after, David says, the family received two items of interest in their mailbox:
1. A certificate of recognition from the Arbor Day Foundation, “thanking us for our efforts to prevent further tree deaths”
2. This handmade holiday card.
Adds David: “This person obviously put a lot of work into carefully drawing and writing it; the artwork and penmanship are immaculate. If only they’d put as much effort into asking us why we were having the trees removed.”
Our submitter’s friend in Columbia, Missouri found this on the ground beneath a tree yesterday, “and she couldn’t just leave it there. It really was the perfect tree for climbing.”
(And the accompanying note really does have the perfect rhythm for a call-a-response revival stomp, no? I’d love to see what the Gregory Brothers could do with this…)
Maya in the U.K. spotted this magnanimous display on a garden wall on her way home, in a neighborhood “that must be simply full of hundreds of passive-aggressive middle class Brits.” Says Maya: ”I was tempted to steal the daffodils myself, but refrained.”
Meanwhile, Greg’s neighbor in Washington, D.C. decided to go with even an more straight-ahead guilt-trippy approach.
Lastly, Fern spotted this scarily upbeat FYI while vacationing in Key West, Florida. (Adds Fern: “We think the flower just died.”)
P.S. Before settling for a ho-hum Susan Orleans reference, I must admit that when writing this post, I tried — and failed — to come up with an worthy Wordworths-riffing title. In light of my lack of inspiration, I was especially delighted by this bit of brilliance from shwo! in the comments section:
I wandered slyly as a thief
Who flows on low o’er gutter spills,
When all at once I saw a leaf,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the porch, beneath the trees,
I think I will be stealing these.
At least three New Yorkers have independently spotted and submitted this sign in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, so I figured it’s time to give it a proper showing. (Submitter Adam took several photos from a variety of angles, so you can a picture of the whole scene.)
Amanda also provided some color commentary. “The ‘plants’ in question are the small jungle encroaching from the right of the photo,” she says. “Honestly, without the sign, the property would have just looked abandoned. Now it looks more like the home of a crotchety hermit.”
And our anonymous submitter, who happens to live less than a block away from these two houses, even did a little extra detective work. “I’ve tried and tried to find out the back story,” he says, “but so far all I have been able to find out is that the feuding neighbors are also brother and sister.”
Cait spotted this artful example of parental passive-aggression “in front of a very, very wealthy residence” in New York’s East Village. “I get that ripping up the flowers was a douchey move,” Cait says, “but this seems a little over the top.”
To which I’d add: Um, yes. (They had me at the first semicolon.)
Meanwhile, across the globe, another 4-year-old was given a similar learning experience. In Australia, however, they don’t bother beating around the bush.*
“My next-door neighbor has some problems with controlling her rage,” says Guy in Austin. So when the apartment manager wouldn’t force her upstairs neighbors to take down their bird feeder — on the grounds that the resulting bird crap from above constituted plant harassment — she wasn’t about to let the issue drop quietly.
Meanwhile, Lucas brings us this report of a uncontrollable botanophile on the loose at his office in Toronto.
![I cannot have my plants because the person upstairs is harrasing [sic] my plants + me.](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4140/4802385326_205d585a7c.jpg "I cannot have my plants because the person upstairs is harrasing [sic] my plants + me.")
![I cannot have my plants because the person upstairs is harrasing [sic] my plants + me.](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4123/4802385206_c662166151.jpg "I cannot have my plants because the person upstairs is harrasing [sic] my plants + me.")
