r/mildlyinfuriating • u/smallholiday • 12h ago
I'm slightly vexed Someone asked to cut a few sunflowers and I said sure, and she proceeded to take every stem she could reach.
I grew them for migrating butterflies. Now they’re probably being sold at a farmers market somewhere. Third pic is from “before the chop”.
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u/Wholegeneral456 12h ago
Yep, define a few. Once, I was involved in a construction project. They were going to select cut the trees on the lot. They selected to cut every single tree down.
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u/smallholiday 12h ago
Oh my gosh no. Just wtf
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u/Wholegeneral456 12h ago
There were some beautiful, very old trees on that property. But that pharmacy company with green in their name didn’t care.
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u/ConstableBlimeyChips 10h ago
Years ago some rich prick decided to build a massive mansion on the edge of my hometown. Tore down every single tree on a 2.5 acre lot and then paid an exorbitant amount to have new trees put in so people on the public road couldn't see their McMansion monstrosity.
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u/InvestmentMain8414 6h ago
A lot of our city's and municipalities now have existing tree protection as part of the permit. As in it needs to show in the plans how the trees will be protected during construction. I always wondered why that was ( because it didnt enter my mind when we built to just tear down the trees for no reason).
This comment makes me understand why.
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u/Xyrovex 3h ago
Here there is a town with a 2000$ fine for every tree you cut on a lake bank to prevent erosion.
Some rich folk wanted to see the lake from his house. He went down and counted the trees. 126 in total. He cuted down every single one.
Apparently, he told the contractor "meh, I can afford it".
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u/DawnSol018 3h ago
I’m a construction manager. I have learned that I cannot worry about insulting someone’s intelligence and must outline the most obvious tasks in great detail. Even then, half the time they will still somehow royally fuck it up
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u/toorudez 12h ago
People love to take advantage. I had an nice older Jehovah witness come to my door and said he could have a few plums from my tree as I had a really good crop of them. Well, he showed up with his wife the next day and proceeded to remove 5 shopping bags worth of plums. Cleaned my tree off from 6' down.
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u/Historical_Fish_3372 11h ago
Omg this happened to me too! They came to the door and asked if they could have a satsuma. I said sure. They came back a few hours later and stripped all 6 trees in my front yard.
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u/sec_sage 8h ago
Were you home, did you say anything?
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u/toorudez 8h ago
I wasn't home. Got a notification from my camera and opened the app to see them picking my tree clean.
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u/TheMoatCalin 8h ago
I would’ve shouted at them from the camera that they had permission to take a few not strip my trees and I had already called the cops
Edit: I probably wouldn’t actually call the cops, but I would threaten it
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u/jkhockey15 6h ago
Fuck it call the cops, tell them someone you’ve never seen before is stealing. They’ll exclaim you said it was okay, which the cops will never believe.
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u/tofette 11h ago
I don’t understand behaviour like this. There’s ripping people off, then there’s ripping people off who have been generous and kind to you - like how do you bring yourself to do that?
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u/TinyMouseParade 10h ago
I had this conversation with a friend of a friend once, except it was roses in a rose bush, not sunflowers. The concept that someone paid for the seeds/seedlings, took the time to water, take care and weed the garden? Didn't even occur to her. When I pointed that out, she said it didn't matter, that mother nature grew the flowers so the gardener has no right over them. Some people are seriously entitled.
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u/Emissairearien 9h ago
Even with her logic she's still completeny wrong ; she shouldn't cut them off at all since they belong to Nature and to the plant.
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u/Peeinyourcompost 9h ago
Well mother nature is the one who grew that girl's hair, so someone should go on and snatch her bald!
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u/Killer1986Chris 6h ago
Mother nature grew the wood for her home, guess that means anyone can turn it into a bonfire.
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u/BoomyGordo 11h ago
They tend to smugly say "well you said i could" or "should have said no" or "your fault for not saying how many"
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u/Commercial-Leek-6682 9h ago
10% of humans should never be allowed to live in society. Just saying.
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u/Acheloma 8h ago
In ye olden days they woulda been kicked out of the walls of the city
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u/Commercial-Leek-6682 8h ago
100% exiled.... we need a new Australia for psychopaths
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u/Acheloma 8h ago
I support space exploration so that one day we can just semd them to a different planet
Theres nowhere left on earth big enough to fit all o em
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u/GeekCat 9h ago
It's the "us versus them" or "individual over the community" behavior. Capitalism has taught us to take as much as possible for ourselves, while not enforcing care for the community. Unfortunately, it just creates a big cycle of greed.
Serviceberry is a lovely book that puts this into perspective.
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u/hwilliams0901 11h ago
Always watch the person if youre just being generous like this cause people suck man.
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u/ThrowRAmissiontomars 11h ago
That’s a really great point. Saying “yes, but it must be while I’m here” could work nicely - just watch them and when you feel they‘ve taken enough, tell them that’s enough. Still lets people be generous without being taken advantage of. Good idea.
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u/LurkmasterP 10h ago
Plot twist: they get offended that "you didn't trust them" and will come back when you're not around, and they'll feel justified because you "didn't treat them with respect."
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u/himym101 7h ago
We have a lemon tree in the front yard that sprouts hundreds of lemons every year, more than we can ever use. If anyone asks, we always say take a couple.
One day a lady knocked on the door and asked if she could have some lemons. I said sure, take a few. She said no, she needs them all. She had intended on stripping the tree bare, leaving none for anyone else. No idea with what she planned on doing with hundreds of lemons
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u/smallholiday 7h ago
She was probably going to sell them. At least she told you she wanted them all before you gave her permission to take a few and she stripped the tree anyway!
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u/WillowPtar_Migan 6h ago
You gotta watch your lemon tree closely from now on. Those lemon stealing whores are relentless.
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u/not_me_nope_never 2h ago
Rental we were in a couple years back,(suburbs of Phoenix) had the next door neighbors come knock and ask us to pick the lemons off the tree in our backyard so they could have them for thier restaurant in town. Said the owner's when they lived there did this for them.
I was beyond grossed out. And no we never picked the lemons to give them.
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u/usrdef 👍 2h ago
What type of lemon tree do you have?
I bought a lemon dwarf bush. It's supposed to be smaller, but I still have a good 5-6 months before anything is ready to pick. And there's no room here for a full blown tree.
But I love the highly acidic lemons. And apparently the bush I bought, produces a more sweet lemon.
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u/OpportunityNo677 8h ago
Something similar happened with my mom’s peach tree, which had some branches that hung over the back neighbor’s fence. Her neighbor asked if they could take some and they took every single fruit off the tree. Then when their fruit trees near the fence started to ripen, they put up a plastic tarp above the fence so my mom wouldn’t be able to retaliate by taking their fruit lmao
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u/uvucydydy 7h ago
I worked with a dude who had a bunch of fruit taken - like all of it! He marched right back out and cut down his own tree. I don't know what the moral of the story is - he was a little crazy.
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u/dadydaycare 3h ago
I get that… taking care of a fruit tree is actually a lot of work and if you’re not gonna get any of it… well fruit wood makes great instruments.
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u/KingsRansom79 10h ago
Put a taller section of solid fencing behind d them before next spring. She’ll be back.
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u/smallholiday 10h ago
It’s a rental. If it was my house, I’d build a solid fence for sure. I think next year I just won’t grow near the fence line. I’ve got guard dogs so I doubt they would hop the fence
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u/dusti_dearian 9h ago
Thistles, grow thistles next to the fence. They support pollinators. She won’t be reaching through them.
Sorry that happened. We love to share our love of flowers and plants it’s lousy when someone takes advantage.
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u/eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww 12h ago
Also: what variety of sunflower are those? I grew some this year but they didn't get very tall.
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u/smallholiday 12h ago
These were the Autumn beauty blend from Eden Brothers. They were so gorgeous. Sunflowers need a lot of water and fertilizer to grow super tall. I had these on a soaker line and programmed the irrigation to run once or twice a day depending on weather. In in zone 9A and it’s still 75 and sunny
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u/eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww 9h ago
Thanks!! I'll have to keep that in mind for next year! We were blessed with ours from a bird seed ring we had purchased so I have zero idea what variety they were xD
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u/imaginedaydream 6h ago
beautiful sunflowers, what type of fertilizers do you use?
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u/smallholiday 6h ago
I top dressed just a bit of granular 5-5-5 all purpose fertilizer when they were a few weeks old. Nothing special
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u/Vanishingf0x Well that sucks 8h ago
That’s heartbreaking, I work so hard on my babies I can’t imagine.
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u/smallholiday 8h ago
I honestly just started laughing when I saw it. It’s absurd to me how someone can do that to someone else’s garden
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u/allyearlemons 8h ago
if u don’t cancel permission to cut the flowers, they’re likely going to take even more next time
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u/Dense_Delay_2605 7h ago
It's wild. It's like you have to say "You may take 5, take 6 and it's stealing" As if they were 2nd graders.
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u/dadydaycare 11h ago
This is why I just say no to people,
no BUT, if your willing to come in (insert day) I will select some for you and you can have that. you do not have permission to take grafts or branches off any of my plants or fruit trees and you can not remove them yourself. I will for you
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u/Lynke524 8h ago
Thats why I would say no, or cut a few for them. Never let anyone have free reign of anything in your yard.
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u/fookindingdong 9h ago
now that you said yes once, she will probably take this as an open invite for anytime she wants 😬
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u/bluevine8 6h ago
Reminds me when i was young one of our neighbors said if they can have some avocados from our tree. My mom said sure, two full grocery bags later my mother had to kick him out the property.
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u/meromeromeru 5h ago
Did she ask without prompting or was it because you showed up? I’m wondering if she was going to just do it anyway but asked because she was about to be caught.
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u/midnighteyesx 3h ago
My sister had a mango tree in her backyard and every fruiting without fail someone would steal every single mango overnight. I couldn’t convince her to get a camera. Then global warming killed the tree off anyway. In 3.5 years she never got a single mango from her own tree
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u/colamonkey356 3h ago
This made me so sad. I would cry if someone was nice enough to let me take a few flowers from them. What an ass.
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u/AskShort1600 2h ago
A storm knocked down a fence and I had a crew come over to fix it. They asked for some pears off my pear tree. There were probably 6 dozen. I told them yes they could have a few. They took all of them when I left to get my kids from school and were gone when I came back. The fence was fixed but my pear cobbler did not come from my backyard tree. I was mildly infuriated as well.
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u/OkayGarlic4 24m ago
Look I know it's approximate but;
Couple = ~2
Few = ~3
Some = ~4
More people need to know this.
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u/CommercialThat8208 12h ago
Next time, say no.
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u/princessfret 12h ago
no offence intended, but this comment is really unhelpful lol
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u/CommercialThat8208 12h ago
Well it’s common sense and clearly OP doesn’t have it.
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u/patiofurnature 10h ago
If you think "never be kind to people" is common sense, you should just go fuck yourself.
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u/smallholiday 11h ago
Not sure how insulting my intelligence is relevant? Like go troll someone else please
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u/BoomyGordo 11h ago
I feel like you are on the wrong post
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u/CommercialThat8208 10h ago
Nobody cares about your feelings fyi.
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u/BoomyGordo 10h ago
Not the type of feeling I was talking about, but go off lil bro
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u/CommercialThat8208 10h ago
Ok weirdo
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u/Ohio-Knife-Lover 12h ago
We had a woman ask if she could cut some of the flowers off of the mum's at my last job and we told her that she could take a few. The next day I come in to find she cut every mum we had and we had 50. We told her to never come back and visit us. They didn't even make her pay for new ones either