It’s hard for me to admit it, but my penchant for posies borders on the criminal. With age I’ve gotten better: Your flowers are safe around me as long as they’re not overhanging a sidewalk, behind bushes that conceal them from your front door, or dangling over the fence on my side. But I once formed a gorgeous bouquet of long-stemmed roses from a real estate office’s abundant landscaping. (It was late at night, and I just happened to have a pair of garden shears in my glove compartment…) I convinced a friend to hire the agency to sell her house some years later, so I consider us even.

How do other people resist the whisper of a lilac, heavy as grapes, overly perfumed, swaying in the breeze, whispering, “Pick me”? I just can’t walk away; I weakly surrender and give myself up to the consequences. This bad-girl behavior -- and no amount of rationalizing can make it anything but bad -- began at an early age. My mother says I picked flowers as soon as my fingers formed the pincher grasp. Dandelions, daisies, dogwoods -- I was indiscriminate -- if it bloomed, I picked it and carried it triumphantly to her to be put in a vase. I blame her for encouraging me: She could have thrown them away or made me “put them back,” but no, she displayed my ill-gotten gains and on top of that had the poor judgment to visibly enjoy them.

I felt some relief the day I realized that half the plants in my mother’s yard began with a story that starts something like this, “I dug that up on the side of the road on the way to Aunt Jo’s house five years ago…” or “Remember that neighbor we had on St. Joseph’s Street? Well, that’s where those buttercups came from.” My Aunt Nola is in on the ring as well -- she has a gorgeous seven-bark that came from the woods outside of town and a garden filled with plants of questionable origins. So I’m really not bad, I’m just fulfilling a tradition, a legacy, a destiny.