In February, a friend and I went to see "Handmade Nation," a documentary by Milwaukee's Faythe Levine about the indie craft movement, and I was deeply inspired in many ways. At one point, the film chronicles a group of knitters who "tag" lampposts and streets signs with knit cuffs as a form of public art. I love this idea, and it reminded of something I had always wanted to do: guerrilla gardening.

After the film, my friend and I went out for drinks at Paddy's Pub, where I told her about my idea: to covertly plant sunflowers in ugly and barren spaces in our neighborhood to create beauty. I thought sunflowers were ideal because they are hardy flowers that could grow with little maintenance.

My friend was enthusiastic about the idea, and we decided to do it. We sent out e-mails, scouted out areas where we would plant and discussed at great length whether or not we could get in trouble for planting flowers on public and private property. We decided that we were at peace with whatever happened.

Last weekend, a bunch of friends and their kids got together with wagons, watering cans, shovels and seeds and "flower bombed" numerous ugly spaces in our neighborhood that, in our opinion, were screaming for sunflowers.

I really love to garden -- it's a hobby and environmental responsibility that I hope my kids will value for their entire lives -- however, it turns out, the real "message" of our guerrilla gardening expedition had little to do with flowers.

My son, who is way more structured than I, kept asking me why we were doing this. "Is it a special day?" he asked, needing a reason for our gardening, like perhaps we were participating in a nationally recognized holiday.

"No," I told him. "We're dong this just for fun. We're doing this to make our neighborhood prettier."

Later, he asked me about the public greenspace where we were planting. "Whose yard is this?" he asked, slightly suspiciously.

I explained to him that the "yard" belonged to someone we didn't know, and although we would never destroy property, it was OK for us to plant a few sunflowers with the intention of improving the space. I told him we were on a mission called "Mission: Sunflower." He liked this.

Who knows if the flowers will come up or not, but it doesn't really matter. We had a ton of fun planting -- the kids were much more focused and involved than we expected -- and best of all, they got the chance to do something that was creative, dirty, slightly illogical and potentially risky without being dangerous.

On some level, our guerrilla gardening doesn't make sense. We spent time and money on something that might not provide a return. But we did it anyway.