Speaking of plants, we should mention our recent plant-napping event.

One morning in April, Joel and I were headed to work when we walked onto our porch and realized that all of my plants were stolen! This included 4 big rectangular strawberry tubs, a big terracotta pot full of mint, an aloe plant, and a few others. Needless to say, it was a lot of work to steal the plants off our porch!

I was so disappointed since it was my second year of strawberries, so they were expected to be really good this year! Plus, we no longer had mint to use in our cooking (and drinks!). I worked so hard to keep these plants alive over the winter and now they had disappeared!

Joel posted on our neighborhood listserv to ask everyone to keep an eye out in case the plants were stolen and sold at a local junk market. We had also filed a police report. We decided that the theft must have occurred between the hours of 11:30pm and 8:00am. Joel even drove around that morning to see if someone had just dumped them some place.

It turns out that the Washington Post sometimes scours these neighborhood listservs for local stories, so Linton Weeks contacted Joel for our story. He was great to work with and had such a great sense of humor.

The article was carried on the front page of the Style section of the Washington Post. We didn't think that many people read the Saturday paper, but we got so many great e-mails and calls from friends. I still laugh at the aricle because it makes it sound like Joel is an alcoholic, that his life is so stressful that he needs that drink at the end of the day!! The article is included below.

So over Memorial Day weekend about a month later, Joel and I were working on re-roofing the South wing of our home. It was a really hot weekend to be outside standing on top of our roof, but we needed three full days to complete the project. (Pictures of this project will be posted soon.) Anyway, while we were up on our roof, Joel pointed out that one of our neighbors had three BBQs in his backyard. We could see their backyard from our roof. The neighbor's house was two doors in from Jackson Street, just the next street over, and our backyards were separated by an alleyway.


Later in the day, I looked over in their yard because there were lots of people in their backyard. I realized that the backyard gate was opened and I was surprised to see four green tubs of strawberry plants lined up their backyard driveway. Joel went inside to grab his binoculars and I was able to identify each and every one of those plants! I asked that Joel walk through the alley way and he was able to identify the pots. We called the cops that night and did not receive any response from them. LAME DC COPS!

The next morning, we went over to a different neighbor's home who works as a cop in the warrants division. She was extremely helpful and basically went over and asked that they return our plants. I got every one of my plants back (except for my very sad looking jade plant - but that's okay) and was so pleased to see them back on my porch! The sad part is that any strawberries that had ripened had been plucked off the plant, but the neighbors didn't even water my plants!!

Their excuse? They had found them in the alleyway and assumed that someone was disposing of them. Yeah, right. Possible, but not plausible.

Anyway, the article is below. Oh yes, and the strawberries have been just delightful!!!

Pistil-Packing Thieves Just Uproot and Leave
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 29, 2006; C01

You hear of caladiums being snatched from the soil in Silver Spring and junipers getting hijacked from a Beltsville nursery; you check out the crime report in Fairfax County and, just about every week this spring, you read where some dirtbag has purloined plants or lifted leafy things.
Plantnapping -- it's a dirty business.

Joel Curtin knows. They stole his strawberries, his jade, his aloe. They even copped his crown of thorns and it wasn't even healthy. They waltzed right up the concrete steps of his storybook house -- white with green trim -- in Brookland a few nights ago and ripped off a dozen or so plants worth more than $250.

What really hurt: They lifted a large terra cotta pot full of mint. It was the mint he popped in his bourbon after a long day of helping lawyers solve tech problems. It was the mint he shared with his girlfriend, Hun Quach, after her long days as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill.

The pot was extremely heavy. So were the 30-inch-long trays of strawberry plants.

"Altogether, the plants probably weighed 200 pounds," Curtin says. "That's commitment."

He sits in his living room as the sun sets, shaking his head, wondering where the world went so wrong and what he can do to make it right. He's a big guy -- friendly face, leaf-green polo shirt, jeans the color of topsoil.

"And why," he ponders aloud, "did they take one that was dying?"

Plantnapping happens every spring. It's a perennial problem.

Another Brookland resident recently discovered three hanging baskets of flowers missing from her front porch. A property owner in Southeast Washington reported this month that someone dug up a four-foot bush, roots and all, in the middle of the night. Someone else east of Capitol Hill told neighbors that she lost four shrubs to a leaf thief.

What kind of worm would steal plants? Ask Marta Caruso, 42, assistant general manager at Johnson's Florist and Garden Center in Kensington. She thinks it's often the work of fly-by-night landscapers. "Smaller plants are easier to grab," she says. One of her customers who runs a modest business nearby lost flowers from a window box.

But larger, more expensive plants also walk away. She looks around her store for a Japanese maple. It's a five-foot-tall blood-red beaut that sells for $149. Next to it is a $99 boxwood. Those types of rare and revered plants are favorites of plantnappers. But she has also heard of people stealing pallets of mulch and Christmas wreaths from nurseries.

Two weeks ago, someone cut through a chain-link fence at Behnke Nurseries in Beltsville and spirited away $6,500 worth of junipers. They were fancy things, pruned to look like pompons.

"It's always been a minor problem," says Michael Behnke, president of the company. "I'm thinking of getting some guard dogs." He also uses security guards and motion detectors.
He says, "We have display beds on Howard Avenue. A couple of plants have turned up missing, snatched up right out of the ground."

A bush bandit did the same thing to Simon Gros, who works for the Department of Transportation. Gros and his wife, Natalie, live in a townhouse on 16th Street SE. They planted three bushes in their front yard. "Nothing spectacular," he says. One morning, two of the three bushes were gone; only the middle one remained. He believes the plants were sold cheaply on the street.

So Gros replanted azaleas. He was a little skittish about the plants earlier this week because they were in full bloom and Mother's Day is right around the corner. Sure enough, on Wednesday night, the new azaleas were stolen.

Nursery and property owners agree, stealing plants is pretty easy. The culprits drive up in a
truck, hop out, dig up a plant or a shrub or a tree, then speed away. Larger plants can be sold for landscaping; smaller plants probably wind up on the black market.

That's where Joel Curtin is going to look for his plants. He will check out local flea markets and swap meets for his terra cotta pot and his strawberry trays. He knows it's a long shot.
He says he has thought about installing a sensor that would beep whenever anybody steps in his yard. He has chained his barbecue grill to the porch. Other victims have installed motion-detector lights or sprinklers. One man tied cowbells to young trees in his front yard.

It has come to this: Gardeners have become guardians.

But you can't lock down the liriope or hide away the hydrangeas.

There are more serious crimes, greater problems facing society, Curtin says. Still, the loss of his plants leaves him sad. He recalls the night of the crime. "Hun had a dream that something dreadful was going to happen," he says. The next morning, when Curtin stepped onto his front porch, the plants were gone.

Ordinarily, he says, he'd be drinking a little bourbon at this time of the evening. But not today. It's just not the same without a sprig of fresh mint.