Geoff Duncan

I've mentioned on several occasions that The Yard around here is ridiculously well-endowed—there is absolutely no doubt the owners and tenants of this house over the years have been plant lovers, ambitious planters, and outright gardening fools. In addition to the plums, cherries, figs, pears, grapes, and other backyard edibles, the house plays host to at least a dozen varieties of rose bushes and climbing roses, two lilac trees, two Japanese maples, a Godzilla-sized big leaf maple, a large pine with lots of character, a palm, jasmine, foxglove, poppies, irises, hens and chicks, crocus, tulips, bluebells (by the armload), euphorbia (everywhere!), and the usual spate of rhododendrons, hydrangea, camellia, azalea, phlox, and fuscia. Heck, there's even a giant fennel that gets about seven feet tall every year.

Out in front between two phlox and behind the mailbox, is something called a torch lilly—also known as red hot pokers or, more formally, kniphofia uvaria. They come from South Africa but seem to do just fine in Seattle—although they aren't exactly common sights.

So, this year, the torch lilly was doing particularly well: where it normally puts out two or three blooms maybe two feet tall, this year it decided to show off with no fewer than eight blooms, a few of which towered above three feet high.

At least, that was the case. This afternoon, I looked outside and saw almost every bloom was gone. Outside, I found six of the blooms had been not-so-neatly cut off the plant. The purloining pruners also trampled over a cluster of blooming sedum and broke off a bunch of the mature phlox, which will probably take years go re-grow.

Yeah, I know: it's just a few flowers. And they're right on the corner of the property, behind the mailbox only a few feet from the sidewalk. Dozens or even hundreds of people walk by them on a daily basis.

But I guess I'm just getting sick of it. Between the litter, the petty thefts (last year someone stole all the glazed ceramic pots which were embedded amongst the sedum—but don't get me started on all the missing mail), the beer cans and bottles, the fast food trash, the shopping carts, the plastic bags and wrappers, discarded bones and packages, the drunks who decide to urinate into the bushes, the kids two decide to toss their plastic brink bottles into the yard…the neighborhood doesn't seem to offer a lot of respect. Which makes offering it any respect in turn that much more difficult.