u/dominickday

▲ 57 r/AITH

AITA for telling my neighbor I won't keep watering her garden while she's on vacation anymore?

I (42M) live next door to a woman (60s) who goes on a month long trip every summer to visit her kids overseas. Two years ago she asked if I could water her garden while she was away since she has a lot of expensive plants and no automatic irrigation system. I agreed because she's a nice neighbor and it only took about ten minutes every other day. Last year she asked again and I did it again, no problem. This year she left a note on my door saying she's leaving next week and listed out watering times, fertilizing schedules, and even asked me to "keep an eye out for pests" and text her photos of the garden every few days so she can "make sure everything's okay." When I told her this year I actually can't commit to that level of detail because of my own work schedule, she seemed hurt and said "I just assumed you'd help again since you always have." I offered to water the basics every couple of days like before, but said I can't do the photo updates and pest inspections. She said that without the full routine her plants "probably won't survive" and that I'm "abandoning" her after two years of help. Now she's asked another neighbor to do it instead and has been noticeably cold to me since, saying I let her down when she needed it most. AITA for not agreeing to the more detailed care routine for my neighbor's garden this year?

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u/dominickday — 1 day ago