Worst Kind of Garden Pest

You know, I garden because I love it. Because I enjoy the scents of rose, lavender and lemon thyme in the hot summer sun. I look forward to digging my fingers through the dirt, finding worms, growing and eating my own food. I do it for exercise, for beauty, for therapy, for enjoyment, for peace. But it sure can make me mad sometimes.
Early this spring, Lily and I planted nasturtium, sunflower, and black swan poppy seeds along part of the front fence line. In the last few weeks that part of the garden overflows with growth and blooms. Some of the poppies, which are a delicious rich midnight—meets—cabernet color are almost as tall as me. The yellow and orange sunflowers are a beautiful contrast and the red, orange and yellow nasturtiums carpet and climb among them.

Daily there are people who walk by our house and comment about how nice these flowers look, especially the unique poppies. Tall, gorgeous, dark purple blooms are definitely showstoppers. One woman even pulled over in her school bus to chat about them. She asked if she could take some of the poppy seeds with her. A week later she left some of her poppy seeds in a bag for me on our front porch. Thank you!Then there are the jackasses who like to rip the flowers out. Not just pick a flower or two here and there, but grab the sunflowers by the stalk and rip them out from the dirt, roots and all. The poppies, well they just rip the beautiful, fragile flowering heads off, sometimes as they are in mid-bloom. Then, as if that wasn’t painful enough, the idiots just toss the flowers aside on the sidewalk. If you want to piss me off, this is a great way to do it.
Greg and I have talked about planting veggies on the side yard, the part of the lawn that is outside the fence touching the street. This land belongs to the city, and if we did turn it into garden, I guess the city could tell us to put it back to sod, whenever they feel like it, but I think it would be worth that risk. However, after the sunflower and poppy thieves, I’m not sure I’m willing to put the time and energy into making something grow that people are just going to destroy. I'd rather have a garden full of slugs.