Wikipedia:The parable of the wildflowers

An industrious volunteer decides to maintain a stretch of a highway. They start by picking up litter. Everyone approves. After doing this for some time the volunteer wonders if there is more they can do to beautify their stretch of the highway. They decide there are too many wildflowers, which the volunteer sees as a weed. So they bring out a lawnmower. They start mowing and suddenly people get mad and turn up in a fairly large group to the volunteer's house. It turns out the volunteer mowed over a rose and everyone likes roses. So the volunteer puts the lawnmower away. But they are still determined to get rid of the wildflowers.

The volunteer begins individually picking the wildflowers. The very first evening the volunteer does this, someone turns up to the volunteer's house and says that maybe wildflowers aren't weeds at all, so could the volunteer not pick them? The volunteer promises to think about it but quickly decides that wildflowers are weeds. As the volunteer keeps efforts at highway improvement going motorists, as they pass the volunteer by on the highway, regularly honk their car horns or shout at the volunteer through their windows as they speed by worried about the safety of someone picking weeds on a highway, especially as the volunteer needs to wander into the roadway to do it at times. The volunteer just thinks that motorists are jerks and brushes it off. And in the weeks that follow people keep showing up to the volunteer's house asking them to stop picking wildflowers, saying that wildflowers are beautiful and not weeds. The volunteer patiently explains why the wildflowers are weeds and suggests that they just agree to disagree. The volunteer also ignores any suggestions that instead of picking wildflowers he could just pickup litter again on a different highway. The volunteer prefers to keep picking wildflowers right here, however, claiming the highway is so close to being perfect.

Eventually someone goes to the local council and suggests that picking wildflowers be banned. At first the town council can't decide, because some of the volunteer's friends show up and defend the idea of picking weeds. However, a few months later when someone new brings it up the council agrees to pass a ban on picking wildflowers on the highway. The volunteer reluctantly agrees to stop picking wildflowers. Instead, they quietly start picking blue wildflowers, as it is not technically a "wild" flower, because it originated in another country.

This draws the police out who firmly ask the volunteer to stop. The volunteer replies simply, "I have stopped. What I am picking is not a wild flower." The volunteer does start going at night more often hoping that perhaps that way the picking will go unnoticed. This does not work and the police, who have run out of patience, arrest the volunteer for trespassing. Sitting in jail, the volunteer can't understand why they're sitting in a cell when other people pick wildflowers every day and never get in trouble.