This is my mother-in-law. She is a thief.

I am her accomplice.

Prior to her ten-day visit, I plucked–and really, pruned, they should thank me–bits of blooms from the neighborhood. I did this out on walks. N would shake his head in shame and pretend not to notice. Hide behind an azalea bush.

But his mother. OH! His mother! She is a voracious bloom thief and plucked every shade of lilac, both kinds of heather, several bleeding hearts, and god knows what when I wasn’t home. Between the two of us, the house looked like a nursery.

I had planned on taking a quick walk this evening to capture that spring slant of seven o’clock sun. But the clouds. They have the final say around these parts. Instead, I found myself eyeing all that would make a good everyday bouquet: flowering kale, lilac, wisteria, golden chain tree branches. Is it wrong to get as excited over my neighbors’ yards as I do mine? I promise to not pluck their first and only iris.

Or the first peach-fuzzed poppy head.

In exchange for the fruits of their labor, they can have some of mine:

And I might be able to spare one or two of these guys:

I know Valerie Easton’s subtitle is Bouquets From Your Garden, but no one household can use all that wisteria. Maybe I’ll just leave a mason jar bouquet on each porch from whose yard I pluck. How can you shake a finger at a girl delivering spring in a jelly jar?