Rachel Thompson shared images of a 'note war' taking place on her street.
A war over flower ownership has been dubbed the "most British thing ever", play out as it did entirely in post-it notes and typed notices. The note war went viral on Twitter after Rachel Thompson, a resident of Dalyell Road in London, spotted a simple appeal stuck to a tree on her street. The note, pinned above a flowering lupin, simply read: "Please don't pick my flowers. Thank you."
Now while this may seem like an innocent, even rational, request, residents of the street did not seem to think so.
According to Mashable, by Saturday afternoon, soon after the note first appeared, the tree had been taken over by other handwritten notes.
"In an area massively affected by gentrification, it's sad to see people claiming ownership of even the flowers," read the first note, affixed below the original.
"Flowers on the public pavement are owned by all the community, not just the house they happen to fall in front of," read another below it.
To these detractors, the original poster had responded with another handwritten note. This one read: "Are you serious? This is not about ownership or gentrification, this is about someone trying to make the street a nicer place for everyone by planting flowers and people stealing them and stamping on them. How can you try and justify that?"
The literal war of words went on when the original note-poster dug up her flowers and took them elsewhere, leaving only a typed notice in their place.
"The council do not pay anything towards planting or watering nor do they provide any maintenance," read the typed page. "These flowers did not grow wild and were here because they were planted, watered, maintained and replaced by local residents."
It also called out two notes for not being "helpful".
To this, too, were two other responses.
The first, a handwritten note in green ink, read: "Helpful to know that the flowers were part of a community project. However, if that is the case it was very misleading to refer to them as 'my' flowers. What a shame that you have taken it upon yourself to dig up the community flowers."
And just below it, another post-it note ended the spat on a sour note: "Love, you've got plenty of spare time on your hands. Why don't you plant some flowers? 'Mine' are going elsewhere."
The war over flower ownership has gone viral on Twitter, collecting thousands of 'likes' and 'retweets'. It also has people taking sides:
What do you think of this whole exchange? Let us know using the comments section below.
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