My neighbour has stolen my wreath!

Many years ago now, I`d left some washing out to get it properly dry, seeing as there was a good breeze. When I went out to the back garden to fetch it in at 10pm, not only had the washing gone, but the line and pegs as well, it had been cut at each end, leaving me a foot of line each end! There was n`t a lot of washing, but the main items were the 2 eldest girls fur fabric coats, the nicest they`d ever had, first time washed, and needed for our son`s Christening a few days later. They had to make do with a couple of cheap anoraks off the market, I couldn`t afford to replace the coats. About 5 years later, a polieman came to the door to ask for descriptions of the washing we`d had stolen, they`d caught a young man stealing washing, when they ent to his house, he had a room stuffed full of stolen washing items! Ours weren`t there though.

Even the Churches are not left out. A couple of summers ago there used to be a big blue pot, well planted up, just outside one of the entrances, and it just disappeared. Pot, soil, plants and all. How heavy it must have been, so they must have really wanted it, shame on them.

Soon after I moved here I arranged various pots and litlle shrubs to line the 5 steps up to the front door. One by one they disappeared. I consoled myself by thinking some poverty-stricken students had nicked them as presents for mums/grans and forgave them.
BUT at a school sale I'd bought 2 little resin tortoises who also lived on the steps. Some days I'd come home to find them 'kissing' or sulking back-to back. Of course at other times they'd be in a very randy position. I found it highly amusing that someone would open the gate and visit in this way.
Eventually they disappeared and I was sad to see them go!!

Lots of wreaths and lights out down our street, we must be an honest lot. BabsAnn I would nick it back, perhaps leaving a note- Beware of the Phantom Wreath snatcher.

Apologies in advance, but I think that is really funny about the pigeons/rabbits eating the ornamental cabbages. How were they to know?!

Yesterday I trailed a few battery operated twinkling lights along our fence. DH has already wondered how long they will remain there. I am sure they will be fine. I am obviously more trusting than he is. (only £4.99 from Iceland anyway )

Grannyjack they are used cartridge cases. We are in a very rural area and shoot. I wanted to recycle the empty cases. Lots of local amusement and some orders. I am horrified by all the tales of thieving neighbours. I rarely remember to lock my car and my daughter is always leaving her keys in her front door- passing neighbours regularly knock on her door to tell her. Tho last year a friend in the next village had her Turkey stolen from the shed bt the back door. The police said it was a survivalist who was only stealing food. We called him a thief.

I had a distinctive pot with a plant arrangement in it, on my front doorstep. Came out one morning and it was missing. I looked up and down the road thinking late night revellers may have taken it and put it somewhere else, but no luck. About a month later I was walking home from work and saw it on a doorstep quite a few houses down. I knocked on the door and said I think that's my pot and they just gave it back to me. I didn't make a fuss just pleased to have it back. More bizarre was that our doorbell rang in the middle of the night and DH went down and there was nobody to be seen. I didn't notice until the next day that somebody had stolen the cover of the doorbell and the batteries.

What a great solution Hattiehelga!

It seems to me that between us we have lots of ways of discouraging unwanted phone calls so what can we suggest to discourage any TB's around us ? Preferably in a similar way to Hattie's mum ? (Naughty I know but such fun and TB's bring out the worst in me !!)

My Mum died in 1989 aged 94 - a sprightly 94 at that. She took great pride in her smallish front garden, especially her border atop the front wall. One year someone kept picking her daffodils. She sat up until the early hours to identify the culprit - a local neighbour. Instead of confronting the thief Mum painstakingly threaded pins through the stems of all the remaining daffodils and then sat up again to see the reaction of said neighbour. It was very satisfying apparently and no more daffs disappeared !!

Sorry to hear about your wreath, someone dug up the holly from my front garden and took it away,roots,soil the lot, how do they do it! better still why do they do it, so petty.

Hope you have a great Christmas to make up for it.

Or pigeons. They like cabbage too. ???

It's rabbits pinkmink????????

We live on a main road, with a garden gate/garden path and wall separating us from the footpath. We always put a wreath on our front door at Christmas, which is usually fastened securely and have never lost one! However, a few years ago I planted up the pots by the door in Autumn with pretty pink/green cabbages (you know the ones) and within a few days they'd all vanished! I've planted the pots up every year since but not with cabbages and nothing has ever been taken!

Granarchist - are those real bullets? Looks like a British front door so must be causing some alarm in the current climate!
My allotment neighbour, aged 89, although he swears he's 90, pinches from my allotment. "Your strawberries taste lovely this year" he tells me. "How do you cook borlotti bean?" - why do you want to know if you are not growing them? He is also a pillar of the community & never misses church!
I must be getting soft - are there degrees of dishonesty?
If someone pinches a wreath they can't be very bright if they live around the corner & display it. I would probably go round & say how much you like their wreath & ask them where they got it. Could be discomforting at least & avoid an outright accusation.
Taking keys out of a lock & a purse is out & out thieving. The person who nicked the wreath would probably have knocked on your door & handed them to you.

I keep reading this thread title as 'My neighbour has stolen my wealth'.

Perhaps it's time to get some reading glasses!

The TB in my earlier post did swop his 'green' wheelie bin with one from another neighbour. The TB's was dirty and smelly and the neighbours was always clean and he had no problem changing the name on his 'new' bin.

I had a Christmas wreath taken from my front door one New Years Eve a few years ago. I always take my wreath up to the cemetery and put it on my parents grave after Christmas so I wrote a note to this effect saying how disappointed I was with the calibre of person who had done this, and fixed it in the same place as the wreath had been. Later that day there was a knock on the door and a kind lady had stopped to tell me that she had seen my wreath wrapped round a sign post. Yes, some drunk had ripped it off the door and flung it round a very high signpost. I had to contact the council to take it down when the office was open. Very embarrassing.

I now take my wreath off the door on New Years Eve and replace it the following day. Sorted.

As to leaving your keys in the door, I have done it a couple of times and both times someone has knocked on my door to tell me. I didn't have my purse attached though, it may have been a different story if I had.

The reason I didn`t do anything about the stolen wheelie bin was that all we had to do was tell the council and we ot a nice new one delivered. It`s just the barefaced cheek of it that gets me, the fact that he still puts it out to be emptied, with our number still on it! If tere really wasn`t one there when he moved in the week before, all he had to do was ask the council and he`d have been given a new one, like we were.

Have never had a Christmas wreath stolen, but then my door cannot be seen from the roadway, and it's a very quiet Close anyway.
thinking about it, have never had anything stolen, except once the car was, but that was taken from a busy park and ride area.

I went out with the family to the forest and bought back all the things needed to make a wreath like the moss and a few twigs, then decorated with balls, glitter dried flowers, ivy and holy from the garden. It looked great and I was so pleased. It lasted 2 hours on the door before it disappeared never to be seen again. The next wreath I made stays in doors now.
Also had 2 troughs which were nailed into the wall stolen after I had just replanted then with pansies. now my front garden looks empty but it does hurt when things disappear especially when the are homemade.

Some of these TBs sound like kleptomaniacs! We had one in our street when I was very young. Pleasant young woman, apparently, but would filch anything that wasn't nailed down if she visited. The women in the street once organised a day trip to Durham and she arrived back at the coach lugging along a roll of carpet she'd picked up outside a shop. And followed by two police officers.

Personally, I wouldn't put a wreath on my front door as I know it would get pinched. I really would like one, but know it's a waste of time.

I often wonder when walking around why people are so trusting.

Especially if they have access to your front door and garden.

It's a shame, I know.

In answer to Riverwalk and granjura - the TB who used to live next door is the first time I had come across neighbour stealing from neighbour and the first time I had heard about it in this area in the 43 years I have lived here.

I have just remembered the chap next door (same house as the TB) who stole some items from our wash house before we moved in !! Everyone else who has lived in that house have been lovely !

Indeed- same question as Riverwalk ?!?

We used to have a very long drive, and drunk youngsters from the pub next door came one night to steal my lovely standard laurel trees. I had bought them as a special offer and grown them for 10 years and they were magnificent. We heard them and shouted out of the window- but off they went, with the really nice big resin pots that looked like old lead pots. We looked all down the lane the next day to see if they had abandonned them- I bet they sold them on for a pretty penny.