A Guilty Conscience

A few years ago, Stefan planted some flowering plants on top of the retaining wall in our backyard. As the plants have come back year after year they have doubled in size and are quite big now. We have clematis plants, fire witches, and some yellow, flowering plant that I'm not sure what it is. Lexi, like most girls, loves to pick the flowers but this has gotten out of hand. Stefan tried to limit her to picking one flower a day, but I told him that was unrealistic because girls don't just pick flowers...they pick bouquets.

One day last week, she picked hundreds of fire witch flowers just to throw them in the air. She did this while I was trying to fix dinner so I was unaware of what exactly she was doing. By the time I figured it out, she had pulled handful-after-handful and our backyard was a carpet of pink fire witches. Lexi knew she was completely wrong and her punishment was to rake up all the flowers and bag them. I told her that she was off limits from picking flowers until further notice.

Well, yesterday I was fixing dinner while Stefan was on his death march home after getting the ax at work so, to say that I was distracted is an understatement. The girls were playing in the backyard. Lexi came in with a cup full of clematis blooms. I was almost angry at her until she presented me with a note that said, "Happy Mother's Day. I love you, Mommy." Who could be mad at that? I let it slide.