Floral dilemmas: To pick or not to pick blooms from neighbours' lilacs?

April showers are supposed to bring May flowers but for many, they also come with moral dilemmas namely, whether it's okay to pick flowers from neighbourhood lilac trees.

With the plants in full, luxurious bloom all over Toronto this week, lilac theft has been on the mind of at least one Torontonian, Globe and Mail columnist Nathalie Atkinson.

It's a question she's fielded on Twitter more than once, to her surprise, prompting some rather intense debate about floral etiquette. On Monday, Atkinson sat down with CBC Radio host Matt Galloway on Metro Morning to chat about the delicate business of lilac etiquette.

Responses fromToronto residentshave ranged from incensed to indifferent, but Atkinson said most don'thave any problemswith pilfering your neighbour's plants.

"Overwhelmingly, everyone has said to me on social media that it's absolutely fair game.I'm saving people from lilac-scented head injuries by cutting them," she said.

"I could've been talking about Mrs. Smith's yard and having to go deep into her actual property and people were all for it. I found some friends of mine on Instagram taking videos of themselves going into alleyways and stealing the lilacs.There's a florist in Washington state who has a whole blog post about how purloined lilacs somehow smells sweeter than the ones you buy honestly. "

For Atkinson, the abundance of lilacs plays a part in whether it's acceptable or not to pluck the blooms.

"I havedown the streeta neighbour with a very teasingly, dangly lilac shrub that hangs well over the sidewalk, and every year I wonder, 'You know, I should probably help them out, maybe they don't have any vases of their own.I should really prune some,'" said Atkinson.

In her own neighbourhood, Atkinson said, homes change hands rather quickly, which meansthat it's not quite as simple as it once was to knock on a homeowner's door and ask if it would be okay to do some picking.

"Sadly, I don't know the neighbour well enough to just go and ask for some, so I always wonder whether I should or I shouldn't."

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For her part, Atkinsonthinks that when blooms are hanging over fences onto sidewalks, they're fair game.

"I actually looked into it a little bit because I thought it's fair game," she said."The city has a whole bunch of bylaws... because there are a lot of disputes of trees and shrubs between neighbours on adjacent properties and as well public encroachment. Trees are an exception, they're allowed to encroach."

And with blossoms in full force, she'd rather see people share in the floral joy than have the blooms simply fall to the ground.

"Come August, I have white grapes that just go crazy, that hang into the sidewalk area and people will knock on my door and ask if it's OK can take a few and I don't mind," said Atkinson."With the lilacs, we should just enjoy them ... because they actually don't last."

Atkinsonsuggests stripping the leaves off lilacs immediately and soaking the stems in cool water, but that may only get you a couple days out of them.

"I actually sent my hubby to do the pruning under cover of darkness, which is somehow worse, and within a couple of hours they were shriveled, sad little accusatory things in my vase," she said.

"Here's the thing about lilacs: you can cut them but they shrivel up and die almost immediately in the vase, so it's almost a poetic justice."