At a certain point, a guy’s just got to give up. Surrender. White flag. When it comes to my mother-in-law she is, quite literally, always right. Especially when it comes to gardening. And this year I have 89 cases of evidence slowly popping out of the ground to prove her right.
Last year my mother-in-law came to visit and we worked in the garden together to pull out the bulbs and plant summer flowers. She urged me to care for the bulbs, clean them and put them away in a dark place. Most importantly, she taught me her technique for “splitting” them so I could have twice as many flowers the next year when we planted. The ritual involved taking them out of the ground, removing the dirt, pulling them apart where possible, putting them in a used onion sack and then later in a vented shoebox in the garage. I was worried they would ferment (or find their way into a soup!), but she assured me this would work.
Now I am not a master gardner, and anytime my garden looks good I attribute it to fate, luck and a lot of Miracle Grow. This blog is not designed to give tips to gardners (there are millions of those). But I have to tell you, this technique appears to have worked. I can count at least twice as many flowers popping up as we had in the garden last year.
I guess a garden is an appropriate metaphor for your relationship with your mother-in-law. It grows, takes time to cultivate, and is always worth the effort.
And she is always right.
(I’ve posted a photo below of the bulbs as they started to emerge from the cold dirt around our house last week – more to come as Easter approaches!)
