Comment / By Erin / Jan. 8, 12:30 p.m.

Amy, I think you are over reacting.
No one likes to be stolen from, but to say: “Now, if you put anything sparkly in your front yard and don’t chain it to a fencepost, you’re pretty much asking for it to get stolen.” is a little over the top.
Everywhere there is teenage hoodlums, etc who for no reason, other than the thrill, will take a garden ornament or plant from the front of a house.
How many times have you been stolen from?
I think that your article is playing in to a fear of losing items. You just can’t be so attached to things that it ‘ends your world’ when it is stolen. Or causes you to never put pretty things in your yard again.
Don’t get caught up in the one instance that you were made to feel vulnerable and write an article that tells people to beware or that we need GPS-enabled microchips for our plants.
Plants are plants. You said yourself that they freeze, dry up get old and die… Garden ornaments are garden ornaments, not your first born child or your vehicle.

Comment / By really / Jan. 8, 10:03 p.m.

I disagree with Erin- the difference is that natural plant death is one thing- theft is unneccessary and mean. A person puts effort into their garden and gets daily enjoyment. A thief is an ugly intrusion.

Comment / By beachcomber / Jan. 22, 12:47 p.m.

How cool would that iPhone app be?! Drive through town and steal back your stuff? Awesome.

I agree with you, Amy, about your plant having a story. Anything is more fun with ‘provenance’. My favorite plants are ones that I’ve nurtured from clippings. I wouldn’t mind someone snitching a clipping but cleaning off my hydrangeas so they can make wreaths to sell is beyond nasty. And if anyone received a plant of any sort in a lovely red pot last Mother’s Day, it was stolen off my porch.

Comment / By Genevieve / Jan. 27, 11:44 p.m.

Erin, I thought she was turning a lousy-feeling situation into an amusing story we could all cluck over and shake our heads at. I don’t think she’s actually suggesting we implant microchips in our $5 plants. Rare $10,000 specimens, maybe, but that’s not for us home gardeners to worry about.

Theft really feels horrible, as does vandalism. It’s a heck of a lot different then having your plant just up and die on you.

I do landscaping and I’ve had little issue with theft in this area, but I’ve had persistent vandalism issues in one garden. I can’t even tell you how awful it feels to design a garden, maintain it monthly, talk sweetly to the plants, and one day come and find these lovingly coddled plants shredded, uprooted, broken, and left to die. I’m feeling sick just thinking about it.

I’m laughing to know the story behind the Blue Chip. If I’d been there you coulda had mine with no drunken brawl needed.

Pruning three of those things two summers ago gave me the worst sinus infection of my life from all the hairy white dusty fuzz on the undersides of the leaves. Two courses of antibiotics and six months later I took the drastic action of cutting out all sugar, dairy and alcohol for a month (life was not worth living) and taking some foul orange powder from moonrise, which finally killed the infection. I will never plant a Buddleia again, I don’t care how cute they breed them. But I am sorry you lost yours. Blue Chip sounds too small to give sinus infections.