To clarify, I mean in-person interaction. My husband walked by a guy doing some gardening today and said, "Oh, those are beautiful hollyhocks. I always have bad luck growing them. How do you do it?" And he replied, without turning around, "You think I'm gonna tell you?"
I mean, a hollyhock nastygram to one of America’s greatest playwrights IS kind of hilarious, on some level
In DC I compliment nearly every dog owner I see with a friendly, "That's a great looking dog!" and I rarely get so much as a grunt in return from them, their dogs are far more responsive.
Inexcusable behavior from dog people!
I usually just speak directly to the dog. (Not kidding.)
I do that, too.
Seriously? The more hollyhocks the better! Why wouldn't you share your knowledge to make the world a more beautiful place?
That's awful and now I really want good information on how to cultivate hollyhocks!
And here’s me, unable to take a compliment on an outfit without divulging where I bought it, the great deal I got on it, and offering a hand drawn map of how to find it in the store.
😂 totally
I planted my hollyhocks along a fence where it’s partially shaded and they took off like blazes. (Yeah, people are ruder.)
Hope his garden burns to the ground. (Bad Odie!)
I would watch the hell out of a Tony Kushner play with this scene in it.
Yikes, that is so miserable!
As a gardener/flower lover, I find this response completely baffling. My neighbors having success growing flowers only improves my life because I get to look at more cool flowers!
Good Lord 🫠
Come on. Grumpy people are as old as civilisation, at least.
Is it bad that I found this funny? Not nice, but funny. City people like to think they're in a Neil Simon play or something. (I miss NYC sometimes, but most of the time - not such a much.)
This wasn't in NYC!
Ever since moving out to the midwest, everything east of the Susquehanna is NYC to me. It’s part of the terms and conditions I had to agree to.
My longstanding fantasy of living in the Big Apple has apparently come true. (And the quantity of Excelsior license plates on the Maine roads this time of year corroborates your perspective.)
When anyone compliments my plants I get so damned effusive they almost certainly regret having done so almost immediately.
Oh my god.
Flowers of another era. My grandmother had them in her front yard of the tiny 800 square foot house on Sherman St in Burlington VT where she raised her 6 kids.
How bizarre!!! Nothing I like more than gushing about my plants...
In his defense, if your whole thing is an ability to grow a good hollyhock, then you might be protective.
this reminds me of canvassing during the 2020 Dem primaries. people were so shocked and offended that you would dare come on their porch, let alone *ring their doorbell*!
Ostracism had its merits. One of Robert Heinlein's mouthpiece characters say, correctly I think, that a sure sign of a dying civilisation is the breakdown of good manners (or words to that effect). In "Friday", if memory serves.
Yikes, that's an insane response from that guy, but I agree. My experience has been that people have lost the ability to be in community. Casual interactions can help build feelings of connection to a larger something.
I've encountered this, too. Just people whose real-life aspiration is to be Dennis the Menace's neighbor.
Longing for the more neighborly and civilized era of AMERICAN BEAUTY:
That's terrible, although I would definitely watch the ensuing play, "The Secret of the Hollyhocks."
Sounds like a classic New England attitude.
“what, and risk losing the hollyhock prize at the state fair?” this sounds like a Blandings novel plot except infinitely less delightful
Mrs Kravitz is always like that!
It’s fairly obvious covid infections wrecked peoples brains. Lit executive function for a tremendous number of people on fire - something akin to a collective mass lead exposure event
wow So RUDE
Hollyhocks don’t do well if the salinity of the soil is high. Coconut coir might help!
Just discussing this with someone. I, too, have faced some surly people in local shops. Charmlessness, amped up and righteous — oi