My sister is a compulive lemon thief. Its the only thing I've ever seen her steal but if she sees a lemon tree she's fuckin stealing a lemon. Its so funny watching this grown ass woman creep up on some fancy house and steal a lemon like some kind of citrus goblin.
As someone who also has an over-producing lemon tree I actually don't mind people taking them. Like, what am I going to do with like 200 lemons? Leave them for the invasive possums to eat? They're absolutely feral.
You might check out recipes for Indian lemon pickle. It's a way of salt fermenting them that results in a spicy delicious condiment that can last for ages.
I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but as someone who has had obscenely over-producing fruit trees in their front yard, I never, ever minded people picking them. 95% are just going to fall into the grass and become lawn waste for me.
Where I live, if a fruit tree overhangs the sidewalk then you’re allowed to take anything that overhangs, but once you reach over the property line it becomes stealing. So what this person did would be completely legal here, assuming they didn’t drive their car over the property line or something.
My aunt used to have a tangerine tree in front of the house, she didn't mind if someone takes some fruit from it but what made us really mad is that eventually assholes broke branches to get them.
There were lilac bushes growing in our park, as well as flowers planted by the park staff.
There are a lot of kids running around there and they often break the branches of the blooming lilacs.
There is nothing wrong with making a bouquet of lilacs to give to your parents, but after playing, children would throw the lilac bouquets on the ground.
They also sometimes ripped flowers out of the flowerbeds with the roots.