So beautiful!

Last week, I was out walking and personally saw an older woman do this. She could have at least knocked on the neighbor's door and asked for a plant cutting. The nerve of some people!

Very pretty amylou!

Waaaaay too early for flowers here in Colorado. We're expecting snow Sunday.

Just beautiful...all of them!

Beautiful, I can almost smell the roses. Tulips are also beautiful.

My roses both front and back yard are blooming like crazy. And I have so many huge beautiful Amaryllis and iris.

Those are all beautiful!

I comfort my self in that though we don't get flowers early we get them for a long time. I grow antiques and for me they will blooms for weeks because my climate is perfect for them.

LALA, I get unreasonably angry when it happens. I mean, I know it's just a rose,more will grow,BUT I hate a thief. I left a VERY nasty note by the rose bush. Its the reason I stopped growing tomatoes out there. People kept taking them,even though there was a nice sign asking people not to. I do not understand grown people assuming it's fine to just take something. I mean,they KNEW it wasn't theirs.

And the worst part is,all they had to do was ASK. I keep dozens of vases and jars up there for those people who didn't have trashy mothers who didn't teach them not to steal that ask me for some.I give dozens away every year in those vases and jars. How hard is it NOT to be a filthy rose weasel? Apparently too hard for some people...

I know how you feel. Last fall someone stole my only white pumpkin. I was really pissed. We own property on both sides of a private road and the pumpkin patch is on the other side of the road. The thief had to walk right past a no trespassing sign to get the pumpkin. This year the trail cam is going up.

Pretty flowers!! Too early for here. We may get a snow storm the first of the week!! 😂

That red rose is beautiful, AmyLou. Is it a Mr. Lincoln?

No garden flowers here yet; Just very early spring bloomers: crocus, celia, and Siberian quill. Two days go, the leaf buds opened on the box alder (maple family) and the temperature fell to 32 F last night. I fear those leaf buds were damaged.

Oh wow....I am a couple of months away from that. But, thank you for

letting me see. :) We are expecting possible snow showers tomorrow..which

isn't that unusual for here. We don't even have the leaves yet.

Alas,lindsey, I dont remember what it is. :(

It's either a Mr. Lincoln or an Olympiad. I think. I would like to have one in my home garden as well,but I cannot recall....

My Hellebores are still blooming and my Hostas are finally poking through. My planter Peonies are leafing so hopefully I'll get some blooms this year.

Your rose is beautiful. I am an abject failure at growing roses.

Those are beautiful! My roses are blooming too, and waterlilies are starting. Waterlilies would be farther along if I had gotten all of them repotted.

Believe me, I have been through it with flower thieves. For example, when I used to be really big into watergardening, I had 150 named varieties of Louisiana irises. Four were given to me and I bought the rest. I hybridized them. They bloom once a year. I had made some crosses, written tags on the stalks. This A-Hole came over when I wasn't there and cut huge armfuls of bloom stalks for his girlfriend...including crosses in process. He told me later..."they were delightful!" Never mind what I told him.

I saw someone around the corner from me, had put in an ornamental pond. I took him a potted waterlily. I talked to him at length about watergardening. He kept adding algaecide...the waterlily started to decline. I talked to him about algaecides. Algae is a plant, just like waterlilies are a plant. He also had a waterfall rushing right past the waterlily. In nature, waterlilies grow in still ponds, not rushing streams. Move it over...but he didn't and it continued to decline. Eventually died.

I had 6 ponds on that place...a long one that ran half the length of my long driveway. I put my best waterlilies in it. Came home one day and there was a huge empty space where a lily I had hybridized had been. My neighbor told me who took it. The man I had given the waterlily to. I drove by his house and there it was in his pond

My lily was so big, having grown in the bottom of a mud pond, that the pads hung outside on each side. I had a waterlily catalog and I took it and knocked on his door and said in case you have no idea, this is how much waterlilies cost.

His wife cried and told me to take it back. I said, no...you keep it.

The next day he brought it back, but since he had tried to pull it up out of the mud bottom, which is very laborious to do it correctly, and he had no clue and had to work quickly before I came home and caught him, the waterlily was destroyed.

It isn't that I haven't given away literally hundreds of waterlilies. I used to mail out at least a hundred every summer all over the country, but when you grow a tropical waterlily from a seed the size of a poppy seed...you kinda want to keep it and maybe use it to make more crosses.

I hate to say it, but I have met more "gimmees" in plants than anything else. I have had people ask me for plants and I always share. I have had people come and take every daylily of a variety in a row and leave me one. Someone asked for a pink Louisiana I had growing by my gate...came and took the whole clump. I never ask anyone for a plant, unless we have agreed on a trade beforehand. I want a plant...I buy it.

But I have also had potted waterlilies taken from tanks and roses that I grew from cuttings, still in their pots, taken. I guess people think I won't miss them, but some of these plants I dote on...I check them multiple times a day. I like growing things from seed and cuttings. But if you want something ask. I have never refused to share plants, but don't take the last one I have of something, and don't do it when I am not home.

Sorry so long. You touched a nerve.

I hear you marilyn. There are very very few things that truly offend me. Stealing from me is close to the top of that short list. And it only makes it worse when people look at me like I am nuts for being upset. "Its only a rose!" They tell me in disgust. I do not get it. I guess they think because it grows, it's free. And I suppose they think if it's pretty and they like it,they can take it without asking. Well,it ain't free. I buy the plant,the dirt it grows in,fertilizer,fungicide,etc. I weed them, water them,fertilize them,spray them to keep the disease away,prune them. And again, all they have to do is ask.

My boss tried to reason with me once. He said that since most people KNOW that if they ask I will give them the rose, perhaps they think that they really dont have to ask. I told him that everyone also knows that I have lots and lots of quarters. They also know I will give them money for the drink machine that is right outside my office door if they ask. I asked him if he saw the difference between someone still asking me for a quarter and getting it from me and someone who knows I will give it to them if they ask, walking in while my back was turned,going in my purse and taking it. Because they know if they ask I will give it to them anyway, so why ask?!?!??!

He said that's different. I disagree. A thief is a thief. I am glad that I am not the only one here who gets it. Everyone around me thinks I am a rotten hateful brat for not being happy and dancing a jig when people steal my stuff.....

Well,except for my SO. He gets almost as mad as I do. He knows how much love and money I put in my flowers..

All of my plant "thieving" was when I lived in Santa Fe, and the plants I propagated were near the road. The place had been a dairy before we bought it and so the barns were by the road to make it easier for milk trucks, etc. There was a big area in front of the barn that I used because water was piped close there, and the soil was extremely rich because it had been a holding area for the cows.

When I moved to the bayou, 30 years later, I didn't have that problem. But the first thing I did there was plant wildflowers on the roadside. At that time, no one else lived on the road. I only planted them where my property bordered.

They came up and were beautiful. One in particular I had never seen before, and I was anxious to look it up. I hoped they would naturalize and come back every year.

But it wasn't to be. A woman who lived in Houston and had a "weekender" ( as she called it) there, walked by one day and picked every single bloom on all of them, and pulled up several plants to plant in her yard. As most people who garden know...wildflowers don't usually transplant well. (sigh!)

I hate thieves too. Also in Santa Fe, had 2 saddles stolen, even my barn radio....and a horse and a pony. I found the horse 9 mo. later, and thankfully had photos of her unusual markings because I never would have recognized her due to her condition being so bad. I never did find the pony. Also stolen were 2 dogs...a sheltie and a black and tan hound...and a Siamese cat. The hound was my husband's dog. He wouldn't hunt anything, but he went on the shrimp boat every day. It was sad and disgusting, but we were located across from the fairgrounds, at that time, and a lot of come and go traffic.

When my roses pop out for the first big bloom, which they'll do in a few days I ask my neighbors to pick some since there are so many and won't be missed. But they never do. :(