Dear Neighbor:

Hello. Perhaps you find it strange that I am writing you since you live right next door. We could even see in each other’s windows when the lights are on if the curtains aren’t closed.  We have spoken several times when we have both been outside working on stuff. I know that while you are not a rocket scientist and while you can curse a blue streak and use the F word a lot and have a rather acrimonious relationship with your wife (for which, having heard your wife, I cannot wholly blame you), you basically seem a regular kind of joe and decent within the bounds of your own moral boundaries, whatever they may be.

I wonder, however, if those boundaries or the boundaries of the other people who live in your house might possibly be moved to consider NOT discarding cigarrette butts in my vegetable garden. Marlboros, in fact.  Yes, I know it is very convenient to toss them over the fence and not have to take the time to put them in the trash can or some other similar receptacle designed for cigarette-butt-containing, but it is rather provoking for me, strange as it may seem.  While I have tossed quite a few back over to you, that subtle hint does not seem to have done the trick. So I would like you to know that now, instead, I am kindly collecting them for you and placing them into a container for you, to save you the 1 second that it would take you or whoever-it-is to do it yourself. Then, soon, someday soon, I will present the container full of butts to you and yours with a kindly plea to NOT give me anymore.

Yours VERY sincerely,

~michele