Our new plants, that we just dug up, hauled over to our house, removed all the mulch for, and planted are…gone! I came home from lunch today to see they were almost all taken! I was so upset. Some of the plants were left though. They were mainly the plants that we had had there before or that we had just got at the store and still had the price tag hanging from them. Therefore, all signs point to the neighbor who abandoned her property or else wouldn’t a random person have taken all of them and not been so selective?
This is all that’s left!
Argh. I really don’t know what to do! She probably assumed that we just stole her plants and so she was going to steal them back. Or she thought maybe that we had something to do with her getting the ticket about the noxious weeds even though we were just as surprised.
It is so weird though. They were there this morning, then they were gone at 2pm when I stopped by home after a lunch meeting. I asked all our neighbors and they didn’t see anything. Our roommate was home but just hanging out in the basement so didn’t see anything.
What would you do? Write a letter to her? Post a note on her house saying that we received permission to take the plants because they would have otherwise been mowed down? Post a “No Trespassing” sign on our yard?
All that hard work! And she lives in a rental where she can’t really do all that gardening, so what will happen to all those plants?
We could just leave it be and forget about it, or try and fill it with more plants from our backyard and greenhouse. Or just buy some more (I don’t think we’ll take any more from that yard -let them mow it for all I care now!). It’s weird because if she had wanted the plants, she could have just dug them up from her old yard. There are still plenty of plants! But I think she was sending us a message. I kept asking Britton if he thought she would be upset and he said, “She could care less. She has moved on and that is not her house anymore.” Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I think she might have been the one to turn us in to the city for our chickens as well…neighbor drama.
What was weird was the city’s “mow it down” order. What a waste of everyone’s time and money. If a lawn, mowed and trimmed, is not in place, somehow it’s “noxious weeds.”
Greeley is a high plain desert, sporadic rain fall and all that. Lawns are water wasters. The city was plain wrong to send a someone out there to wreck that yard. What a weird place. Government gone berserk.
Sorry you got caught up in this; you were doing the right thing to try to save the plants.
That is pretty amazing. Of course you don’t know who did it so one can’t jump to conclusions.
My mind immediately jumped to your April Fools pranks, but that doesn’t seem to fit.
I think getting a note to the neighbor who had the plants and just stating that the landscaper was mowing them down and you were rescuing them would be the only thing to do.
Wil
I wouldn’t put a note anywhere. The lawn boy never really had the right to tell you guys you could dig up the yard in the first place. If the house was still in legal proceedings its possible that she had possession of the house. If the bank owned the property, the lawn boy still had no right to give you permission to dig up the plants. Either way it wasn’t the lawn persons property.
Lesson learned, don’t take plants from the neighbors yard unless you have the owners explicit permission.
Just wait.. Lowe’s always has those types of plants on clearance in the fall anyway. You can often pick up nice Colorado native plants for a $1 or less a pc.
I think we are just going to wait and see if she comes around again and then we’ll talk to her about it. But Wil, I would be willing to bet money it was her. The mailman today told me she finally changed her forwarding address after about 3 months because she was afraid bill-collectors would know where to find her. So she shouldn’t be around the neighborhood as much. She doesn’t live here anymore. It’s not her house. She’s just bitter about her situation and wanted someone to take it out on.
We had the owner’s agent’s (the owner being the bank) permission. We saved those plants from destruction. We even talked to the City of Greeley about it. But I guess the lesson learned is it’s better to just watch on the sidelines as the world goes crazy instead of trying to save anything.
We got some plants at Lowes. They were 50% off.
So does that mean if you hire someone to cut your lawn they have the ability to give anything away on your property? Confucius say.. Let plant get mowed, the strong will come back. Buy plant at Lowe’s and sleep with peace of mind. Plants not be stolen overnight.
P.S. Summer says you are crazy.
I agree all signs point to the ex-neighbor. If it was in Puerto Rico, she would get some of our vigilante justice, served cold (nothing horrible, just equal to your loss). However, having lived in the civilized part of the USA for over 30 years, I wouldn’t mention it at all to her. She’s got enough problems. She’s gone, good riddance. Besides you don’t want to stoop to her level, it would probably get ugly. The bright side is that this motivated you to spruce up that part of your yard. Forget about it and move on. Fran
TNK: If someone calls my company and asks for access to our system I am the one they put in charge of granting / denying and revoking that access. If you want files, I am your man. I am in charge of that. Nobody second guesses it.
I wouldn’t be the right person however to ask about landscaping. What would I be doing giving someone old plants from the company’s lawn?
A landscaper however would be the person in charge of such things. The bank did hire them to destroy all the “noxious weeds” in the yard, we asked if we could take them instead and he allowed us -we were helping him remove the “noxious weeds” by saving them instead of having them weed wacked and mowed. The issue here is that the ex-neighbor was unaware of it and she made some big assumptions. She was in the wrong. She didn’t have my landscaper’s (me) permission, she didn’t ask anyone!
Fran: I agree that not mentioning it is the best route to take. We have just about forgotten about the whole thing. It has become just a funny story about living in the “civilized” part of the US 🙂
Life is fun. Thanks everyone for listening and commenting. Its fun to talk about.