I have a rosebush.

It is a flori­bunda with deep red–almost maroon–flowers. I’ve been work­ing on it for a few years now, and I prune it when it needs prun­ing, and I water it every other day, and I feed it and rotate it (it is in a large pot) and clip off dead blooms and what­not. I care for it, rather like some peo­ple care for pets. It is a thing that I am proud of. Proud that I have kept it alive (I have a bad track record with plants); proud that I have been able to trans­form it from the scrag­gly lit­tle runt I bought at a Home Depot some­where into a big, beau­ti­ful, healthy bush; proud of the time and money and love I’ve put into it. It has been get­ting ready for its first bloom of the year, which I expected dur­ing this first week of June. It had pro­duced more flower buds this year than it ever had in years past. I was really look­ing for­ward to it.

This morn­ing, I dis­cov­ered that some merry prankster had come by and chopped off all the new buds.

Attached image: Rose­bush 1

And left the buds strewn all over the porch.

Attached image: Rose­bush 2

Thirty-​​two in total. I col­lected them and put them in a Ziplock in my freezer. When I find out who did it, I intend to present the rose­buds to that per­son and ask that they pay for them.

The cul­prit left four buds uncut, all of which are dif­fi­cult to find as they are hid­den among the foliage.

My leas­ing office seems to know exactly who did it. Because they have received numer­ous sim­i­lar com­plaints of prop­erty dam­age from other res­i­dents. I have no per­sonal knowl­edge, how­ever, of who­dun­nit, so I shan’t go about cast­ing asper­sions I can­not back up with the pho­to­graphic evidence.

Hence a new acqui­si­tion.

I shall set up the cam­era to watch my rose­bush from now on.

The office seems to think it is a par­tic­u­lar young per­son who lives a few doors down. If it is indeed this par­tic­u­lar young per­son who is respon­si­ble, I should be very, very wor­ried about her san­ity. Some­one as young as that, able to form the nec­es­sary mali­cious intent to cut of just the buds of my rose­bush, and with­out any prior con­tact with me, may have the early mak­ings of a sociopath.

Or maybe it is just that young peo­ple these days have no con­cept of property?

My rose­bush will recover. But it will take another month before it is able to fully bloom.