A woman claims she asked her sister-in-law and teenage niece to tend to her prized plant collection while she was away for two weeks with work, but was in for a shock when she returned.
The woman in question has been interested in plants for a few years now and had a collection of 70 plants at one stage. However, she managed to whittle this down to just 35, keeping "just the ones I really love".
Her 14-year-old niece Jenny also developed an interest in plants and would come over to her aunt's house to chat about them and help out with tasks such as propagation and repotting.
Before heading out of town for her trip, the plant lover asked her sister-in-law and young Jenny if they could plant sit for her, telling Jenny she would pay and would also gift her a few cuttings as a thank you.
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However, after returning from her trip, she was horrified to see that the pair had chopped away at her expensive plants, taking cuttings to sell on.
Although she had agreed to let Jenny have a few cuttings, this isn't what she'd meant at all, and she was very upset to see her beloved collection in such a sorry state.
Taking to Reddit, she wrote: "Well I returned from my trip and was horrified. They watered and gave the right amount of light, but they also decided to give a lot of my plants haircuts. Big ones.
"My prized Cebu blue pothos mother plant was destroyed. The climbing one too. My Manjula Pothos had been done the same. My golden that I trained up my stairwell. My string of pearls, hearts, and ruby necklace were all destroyed. My silver stripe philodendron.
"The worst was that my Pink Princess Philo had been reduced to two leaves. And my Albo Monstera is down to three. I don't even think they got nodes necessarily. These plants are expensive and prized".
The poster - who goes by the username u/plantmomaita - continued: "I basically broke down and when they came to meet me to give back my key I screamed and screamed at them. Jenny started crying saying I said I would give her cuttings so she thought it was okay.
"I screamed at her to go home and get what she stole from me and bring it back now because she knew I didn't mean she could destroy my f**king plants. My sister-in-law got between us and said 'what's done is done'".
She demanded that they return all the cuttings, but Jenny explained that her mother had already sold the majority. It was at this point that the infuriated poster screamed at them to leave her house, telling them that they wouldn't be welcome again.
She's now wondering whether she went over the top, especially after her brother told her she was taking things "too far". However, her fellow Reddit users have reassured her that her feelings are valid.
One person wrote: "For the people that don’t understand the gravity of this- just do a quick Google search of some of her plants that she named and you can see that a single leaf off of one of her plants can go for several hundred dollars.
"I wouldn’t be surprised if the sister-in-law and the niece profited thousands off of what they stole. It’s going to take her months if not at least a year to recover the losses from this".
Another said: "They deliberately waited for you to be gone so they could steal from you. It wasn’t even for themselves, it was for profit. I hope you made them give you the money they received. It obviously doesn’t help, but at least they’re not profiting from your loss.
"What on earth got into your niece to do such a thing with her mother if she was so interested in your hobby? I feel your pain".
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