flower stealing

Although any adult should always tell a small child not to pick flowers from somebody elses garden or trespass, I think that you did over react to this.
I think I would have watched or gone outside to make sure the whole clump of tulips did'nt vanish , but no more than that, it's scary to have an angry adult chase you to your own doorstep.Perhaps you were feeling a bit wound-up that day anyway, in the way that we all can be sometimes.

ROJON , well done you, I would have felt exactly the same with knobs on !!
I know they are only flowers , that is not the point, we wait and wait for the flowers to burst forth, well I do , and some little blighter comes and snaps them off.
The mum is certainly not teaching him right !
It is really

I would be so cross rojon and can't understand peoples attitude to seeing nice displays and not leave them alone for others to enjoy,but I would discourage anyone chasing after people as you never know what they may do to you if you did have up close confrontation. for you to make you feel a wee bit better.

one other thing , on reflection I think it perhaps not was the best thing to give chase ,.
Never quite know how folk are going to be !
Still for you though !

Earlier this year I looked out of my window and saw a woman picking armfuls of snowdrops from the amazing display in the hedge further down the lane. I was incensed - but unable to run fast enough to catch up with her. Grrrr!

There is a difference between chasing after an adult and chasing after a small child though!

Not right- but at least it was just one. What used to really upset me was the kids on the way to school breaking off the daffodils' heads from the magnificent village greens- wantom destruction.

Even worse, was some 'market traders' picking off all our huge bramley apples from the two trees in our front garden, whilst we were at work. The postman saw them- they had parked the van on our drive, no less. Not a single apple left- about 80lbs gone, and lots of broken branches. I was seething.

And at Rutland Water some years back, an elderly couple, butter wouldn't melt- were digging up primroses from the woods by the lake- they had trowels and a box to put them in. I stopped and politely asked what they were doing- and then told them to stop and plant them back. They told me to 'mind my own business' - so I called the warden. Fortunately I had his number in my phone as I had done some work with them recently (re badgers)- and he came straightaway and ordered them to plant them back- to the applause of other walkers enjoying the day and the flowers.

Well done Granjura!. When I was about 4, unbeknown to my mum, I went to the house across the road and picked a huge bunch of daffodils. When mum saw them I was taken to apologise and return the flowersc. The neighbour often teased me about it in later years

I remember being about three and picking some snapdragons from next door's garden, for my mum. She went mad, and made me go and own up and say sorry. That was bad enough, but the bloody things were full of earwigs, which crawled all over me. Served me right and I got no sympathy. I've never liked antirrhinums since. Or earwigs.

We used to have a lady, a patient from the local mental hospital, who used to regularly come into the front garden and pick one or two flowers. She was harmless and it seemed mean to deprive her of the pleasure!

Good for you Rojon . The child was with an adult so there no problem in your going after them. The adult admitted she told the child to pick the flower !

About 40 odd years ago, a neighbour came to tell me that she`d caught daughter number 2 picking flowers from her garden. I apologised, brought my daughter inside, shouted at her and smacked her, no response, then I asked her why she`d done it, and her eyes filled with tears, and she sobbed "I wanted to give them to you." Definition of guilty feelings?

As a kid, I loved going to pick wild flowers from the meadows and take them to older ladies in our village- their joy was such a treat. Depending on season, wild daffodils and pheasant eye narcissi, daisies, or bunches of mixed flowers. Sadly so few of those wild meadows still exist- and all the bulbs have been grubbed up. Driving through the French Jura the other day, we did come across some fields of wild daffs, and it was so lovely.

We are so lucky to have a field a the back which is the only one left with all the wild flowers in the area- which are now covered with so called (grrrr- should be illegal re. Trades Description Act) 'improved grassland!!!

I picked masses of flowers when I was little, that were hanging over garden walls. My mother tried to get me to go back and apologise - but I couldn't remember which flowers I had picked from where! Still, that was the end of my flower-gathering.

I plant a whole thick row of daffodils at the front of my hedge, which are followed by muscari, then dahlias. Occasionally a few go missing, but once I discovered that it was a 10 year old boy (via my son) picking them for his mum for mother's day so have let it be ever since.

Holly has been the prickliest subject amongst various friends. as with the apples above, whole trees have been stripped or even cut down, from friends' gardens in Kent, over the years.

An amazing postscript to the flower picking episode. About tea time I heard a knock on the door. Looking through the spyhole I saw the woman from the flower episode. When I opened the door she said she had thought about what I had said and realised that what she had done was out of order so had come to apologise and handed me a lovely little plant in a pretty pot. I thanked her with a big smile on my face.
It was a really good and difficult thing to do. I had been considering taking the pot of tulips into my back garden but have now left them in the front. My faith in people has been restored.
Be assured Roses I didn't speak to the child in an angry manner but very quietly.

Lovely end to the story. I do hope she has had a chat about it with the child too.

Glad it turned out OK in the end!

The apple story puts my experience into the shade. We had planted new fruit trees at the school where I worked. Assemblies were based on how things grew, the children all watched them grow and blossom and fruit..lovely! Then one day just as a couple of apples were almost ready a
Grandmother(yes really!) collecting a child picked them off the tree and gave one to her grandchild and bit into the other herself! I was fuming!! The other kids were fuming...but she could not see why I was not happy!

I once received a 'desperate' phone call in the middle of the night from a minister friend (very eccentric but loveable all the same ) He said to me that he had asked advice from " 'im above but he isn't at all forthcoming so I am asking you to talk me out of what I am about to do" I asked what he was doing at this moment and in the middle of the night. "I am standing by my front door dressed in full camouflage wearing a balaclava and holding my penlight torch in my hand" my blood ran cold as I was not sure what he was up to at all. "Well, you know I have this penchant for irises? When I go on my Ministerial duties I look for likely ones and, if possible, I jump into the garden and pull them up and plant them in my own garden. If there is a gate I test to see if it squeaks or not before I enter the garden" "Yeeesss!" I replied "So what is the problem now? Where are you going and why do you need me to talk you out of it?" "The problem is that when I tested the gate this morning on my rounds it squeaked rather loudly, the other problem is the iris I am after is in the Police Station garden!!!!"

We lost this wonderful man a year last November. He was the most eccentric and loveable friend but did get himself into some scrapes. He was excommunicated from the Methodist church, why we do not know. It is his birthday on Wednesday and a few of us are going to visit his grave and have a pint for him. I may take some irises.

What a story Flower one of those situations 'you couldn't make it up' applies to. it was a bit more than a 'penchant' for Irises though, more like a compulsion, maybe he enjoyed the risk factor.

Iris rustling ministers. hmm Sounds to me like a good enough reason to throw him out of the Methodists.
If I see kids damaging plants I say (or bellow, depending on distance) - "They are for everyone to enjoy. You're spoiling the park for other people".
I was mildly affronted yesterday to find a cheeky so and so had parked in our residents parking bay. (clearly marked as private - but some people don't want to walk 2 minutes from the car park to the restaurant)
DH muttered something about lipstick. But I thought that a waste. A Sharpie pen though is just the thing to write a polite message ALL OVER the windscreen. Directing them to the public carpark.

D'you know, I've never thought of actually writing on the windscreen!

I get really pissed off with people parking in the private carpark at work (leaving me no room to get in) and have a standard notice I usually stick under their wiper, but perhaps I'll get the felt-tip out next time!

We were warned by the police not to leave polite notes under windscreen wipers when people parked thoughtlessly in our road.

Perhaps I will buy a sharpi pen and write on the windscreen instead.

Good that the OP ended on a positive note.

What was the police justification for warning not to do this, I wonder. Fear of escalation, retaliation???

Our block of flats in the UK has its own car-park, each flat having one dedicated/numbered space + 3 visitor spaces. It is semi-enclosed, but not gated- but as it is right in the centre of town, some people do park in visitor spaces and then walk to town to do their shopping- I've left plenty of 'polite' notices on their windscreen, and challenged some verbally too (polite but firm ;) )