And again

France and I have a special relationship. The kind in which I love so many things about it, but it chooses to constantly humiliate me. If I had a friend in a relationship with a guy similar to this I would advise her to run in the other direction. It seems that because my time here is short these lovely little moments have increased in frequency.
Next door to our apartment is a typical enormous French house. Three stories with lace blue curtains fluttering in and out of big open windows a lovely garden with hollyhocks and roses. Vines that spiral skyward crawling along the walls, piano music floating on the breeze and a little old French lady who resides as queen over this fairytale place. We talk almost everyday, in English (she overheard me and the girls once and even responds to me in English when I try out my French). Today she clipped off a rose for me, a lovely red rose (my favorite flower, am I predictable or what) and told me to smell it on my way to the grocery store. France in the summer is no picnic for the nose let me tell you, especially in the city.
So I was smelling this lovely flower walking along past other gardens stopping every once in a while to admire. At one particularly lovely scene that I was lingering over I stumbled into a sticky situation. A man, presumably the owner, came out of the house and saw me "suspiciously" eyeing his garden with a big old rose in my hand identical to his. He flipped out started yelling at me, about how selfish it is to destroy his handiwork, was I really stupid enough to think that he slaved over this garden for my singular pleasure and demanded that I give him back his rose. Well at this point I was struggling to understand everything he's saying, but I honestly got the gist pretty quickly. Then I tried to explain in horrible French that I hadn't plucked a rose from his garden and it had been a gift from a friend and of course he couldn't understand me. He just continued on his little tirade with me getting more flustered by the moment. In the end I just walked away with him STILL yelling.

Oh France why do you treat me so?