Having new neighbors can be discouraging, but these turned out to be a delight! We loved having them around when they suddenly shared someone was ruinning their garden. Their confession somehow related with my wife’s new habit of watering our garden at night!
New neighbors moved into the house next door, Maria and her husband, Luis a few months ago. From the beginning, they seemed like the kind of people you’d want to have around, until they began complaining about sabotage.
They poured their energy into that old, survived house, changing the garden into something out of a lifestyle magazine spread!
My wife, Teresa, immediately hit it off with Maria, and they quickly became best friends. They shared about kids, recipes, and even past regrets! I
However, that was all about to change.
One evening, we invited Maria and Luis over for dinner. The air was perfect with grilled meat and the faint sweetness of jasmine from Maria’s garden drifting over.
“You know, we love it here,” Luis said.
“But honestly? It’s been hard. Someone’s been messing with the garden. Pulling out seedlings and plants, pouring something on the soil. I’m not sure how much more it can take. If it keeps up for a few more weeks, we might just… move. It’s heartbreaking.”
He smiled, but it was crisp. Maria’s face tightened. She bobbed once but said nothing.
What confused me wasn’t just Luis’s revelation; it was the timing. The ruination had started around the same time my wife had built a curious new habit: slipping outside at midnight with her little green watering can, insisting the “moonlight made it the perfect time” to take care our garden.
That night, after we went to bed, I waited. I closed my eyes, feigning sleep as she carefully slipped out of bed in her pajamas.
Instead of drifting back to sleep, I slipped out of bed, pulled on a sweatshirt, and padded down the hall. I cracked open the curtain and peered through the hallway window.
What I saw endered me immobile and my breath catch!
Teresa wasn’t in our garden! She was across the lawn, kneeling by Maria and Luis’s roses!
I was mazed because what she was doing didn’t look like sabotage. It looked… tender.
Therefore, I waited until she finished and quietly snuck back to bed as she tiptoed back inside before slipping into bed next to me, pretending to stir.
When she moved under the covers, I muttered, “What were you doing in their garden, Teresa?”
She jumped in surprise like I’d caught her robbing a bank, before going stiff!
For a heartbeat, she said nothing. Then, slowly, she sat upright, pulling the covers around her like a shield. In the faint light from the streetlamp outside, I could see her face, caught between fear and sadness.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I just… I didn’t know what else to do.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They’re the first good neighbors we’ve had in years, and Maria’s like the sister I never had. She told me about the garden, how someone was ruinning it. I couldn’t stand the thought of them moving away. So I started trying to help. I’ve been putting salt around the edges, to keep pests and… maybe spirits away.”
“And I’ve been replanting whatever I can, trimming damaged plants, cleaning up. I never saw who was doing it, but I thought maybe if I could undo some of the damage… they’d stay.”
“You disappear every night just to protect their garden?” I asked softly, stunned.
She bobbed, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I know it sounds crazy.”
“Crazy? Maybe,” I said.
“But sweet? Definitely! Come here, you precious woman, you!” I said.
The next morning, we took a plan.
“I don’t want to tell them what I’ve been doing,” Teresa said.
“It would shame them, and me.”
“I get it,” I said. “But we can’t let this keep occuring either.”
Therefore, we decided to install security cameras. Three nights later, we caught them!
It was just past 2 a.m. when the motion alert pinged my phone. I sat up, heart hammering, and checked the camera. Two shadowy figures, both in hoodies, crept through Maria and Luis’s garden, flashlights muted against their palms.
“Gotcha,” I whispered.
The next morning, we reviewed the footage frame by frame. Teresa gasped when she recognized the shoes. “Isn’t that…?”
“Yep,” I said grimly. “Todd and Claire. Two houses down.”
They were a young couple who mostly kept to themselves, polite but distant.
Armed with the footage, we contacted the neighborhood coordinator. Todd and Claire were confronted, fined, and forced to pay for the damages, replacing plants, resodding the yard, and even repainting the fence they’d vandalized.
Maria and Luis stayed!
One evening, as they preapared after a long day planting a new row of lavender, I sat on the porch sipping iced tea, watching them.
“You know, Teresa’s taught me more about plants in the last month than I ever thought possible.”
Teresa laughter. “Guess I had a little practice.”
I smiled, feeling something warm settle in my chest.
“You’re kind of amazing, you know that?”
She smiled drowsily. “Only kind of?”
I tipped in and kissed her forehead. “The best kind.”
