I decided to turn it into a vegetable garden.
I spent weeks planning it out, watching YouTube videos about soil pH, and ordering seeds online. When the weather finally warmed up, I got to work.
I turned every available inch of that yard into something beautiful. I planted tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, basil, rosemary, thyme, and even strawberries for the kids.
My daughter, Emily, who’s nine, helped me design the layout.
Ben, who’s seven, dug holes with his little plastic shovel. Sophie, my five-year-old, carried watering cans that were almost as big as she was.
My hands were blistered and raw by the end of each day. My nails were permanently stained with dirt, and my back ached from bending over for hours.
But watching those first green sprouts push through the soil made every bit of pain worth it.
My little garden became my therapy and my peaceful place when the day got too loud.
And Linda? She absolutely hated it.
She started with the passive-aggressive comments right away. “You spend more time with that garden than you do with your husband,” she’d say when she came over uninvited.
“You’ll never keep it all alive, Sam.
Some people just don’t have a green thumb, and that’s okay.” She’d walk through the yard, pointing out weeds I’d missed or plants that looked “a little droopy” to her.
I ignored her. I watered my plants, pulled my weeds, and watched my garden grow despite her negativity.
By early July, my backyard was absolutely bursting with life. The tomato plants were heavy with fruit, the zucchini was producing faster than we could eat it, and the herbs smelled incredible.
Even Jake, who’d been skeptical at first, admitted it looked like something you’d see on Pinterest. I was so proud of what I’d built.
I planned to harvest everything that weekend with the kids. We were going to make fresh salsa and zucchini bread, and I’d invited my mom over for dinner so she could see what I’d accomplished.
I was so excited that I could barely sleep.
But when I came home from running errands that Friday afternoon, something felt wrong the second I pulled into the driveway.
The fence gate to the backyard was standing wide open, swinging slightly in the breeze. My flower boxes near the patio were knocked over and smashed. And when I got out of the car and walked closer, my stomach dropped so hard I thought I might be sick.
Every single plant was destroyed.
I stood there in the middle of my backyard, unable to process what I was seeing.
My tomato plants were crushed flat, ground into the dirt with muddy footprints all over them.
The pepper plants had been torn out by the stems and thrown across the yard. My herbs, the ones I’d so carefully trimmed and nurtured, were ripped up and scattered everywhere like garbage.
The strawberry patch that Sophie had been so proud of was completely stomped into the ground. She’d been checking those berries every single morning, counting them, and talking to them like they were pets.
And now, they were just red smears in the mud.
There was trash everywhere, too.
It looked like someone had vandalized the place on purpose, like they’d gone out of their way to make it as ugly and destructive as possible.
At that point, my hands started shaking. I immediately pulled out my phone and called Jake.
“Someone destroyed the garden,” I managed to say. “Everything’s gone, Jake.
Everything.”
“What? Sam, slow down. What happened?”
“The garden.
Everything we planted. It’s all destroyed. Ripped up… crushed.
There’s trash everywhere. It’s all just—”
“Okay, okay, just breathe,” he said, trying to stay calm. “It was probably just some bored teenagers or something.
I’ll be home in 20 minutes, okay?”
But I knew it wasn’t teenagers. Deep in my gut, I knew.
I was walking around the yard with tears streaming down my cheeks when I saw it. There, on the corner of the fence, was a bright pink silk scarf fluttering slightly in the breeze.
It was the expensive designer one Linda wore to church every Sunday, the one she was always bragging about.
As I recognized the scarf, everything suddenly started making horrible, perfect sense.
I pulled out my phone again and called her number.
It rang three times before she picked up.
“Linda,” I said. “Did you come to our house today?”
“Hey, hey…” Linda replied in a shaky voice. “What happened?
What’s all this about?”
“Just tell me. DID YOU COME TO OUR HOUSE TODAY?”
There was a long pause before she spoke.
“Maybe I did,” she said.
“Why do you ask?”
“My garden,” I began. “Someone destroyed it. Every single plant is gone, and there’s trash everywhere.”
She let out a long exhale, like she was tired or bored.
“Oh, sweetheart. You know, maybe next time you won’t ignore my advice. I told you that the garden was attracting pests, didn’t I?
Rats and bugs and who knows what else. I was just cleaning things up before it became a real problem for the neighborhood.”
“You did this? You came into my yard and destroyed everything?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Samantha.
They’re just plants. You’ve got three children to feed and a house to take care of. You don’t need to be out there worshiping flowers like some kind of hippie.
I did you a favor, really.”
I hung up without saying another word.
When Jake got home and I told him everything, he went pale. He went to her house the next morning to confront her, and when he came back, his face was tight with anger.
“She admitted it,” he said quietly. “She said she was protecting the yard from pests and that you needed to learn to prioritize family over hobbies.”
“What did you say to her?” I asked.
“I told her she shouldn’t have done it.
That it was your property and she had no right.”
“And?”
“And she said she was sorry I married someone so sensitive.” He looked at me, and I could see the conflict in his eyes. “Sam, I think she really believed she was helping. You know how she is.”
