You can get a big tray of ‘em for about $15 at every Home Depot, garden store, and even most grocery stores this time of year here in Zone 6. Probably elsewhere, too. They grow just about anywhere. They’re common, easy to grow, pretty.

So, when it happens that a seven-year-old boy and his best friend accidentally let their ball get over the fence and into your yard, and they head over there to retrieve it, and they accidentally step on a couple of these pretty but common plants, the right response, if you must make one at all, is to politely ask the parents of the trespassing kid to ask him to stop going in the yard unattended. If you must say anything at all, that is. Many people, especially those who live in a neighborhood largely populated by young families with grammar school-aged kids, would just chalk it up to “kids being kids,” try to fix the flowers, or in the worst case, shell out that $15 and get some new ones and let it go. But if you must say something, the neighborly thing to do would be maybe to say, “you know, if Danny loses his ball in our yard, can you just have him ring the bell and I’ll go get it for him?” Especially to your next-door neighbor, the family whose house is maybe 12 feet from yours. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, you intoned, obviously without grasping, just a few hours prior.

What you probably shouldn’t do, neighbor, is to interrupt the party I’m hosting to angrily berate me for ten minutes on my porch, and in the course of doing so, imply I’m a liar and insult the intelligence of my child, you soulless, wretched, miserable, dead-to-me-forever fucking truckstop whore.

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