Does your mother-in-law garden? How about helping you garden?

Recently, my partner’s parents visited from Pennsylvania. When my mother-in-law wanted to do something in the yard, I handed her some grass clippers and she cleaned out around the peonies. Then she moved on to tidy up around little balsam trees. When she ran out of little projects to do, she started urging me to begin a big project I’d been putting off. Frankly, I was daunted.

The folks who lived here before us had an above-ground swimming pool that drained out onto a rock-rimmed area nearby, a sort of 1970-era precursor to a rain garden, if you will. Since we removed the old pool, we obviously didn’t need the drain space anymore. I’d been dreaming of re-purposing as a cranberry and lingonberry garden.

But the former owners had laid down layers of plastic pool liner across the “floor” of my proposed planting area. On top of that was at least six inches of dirt and a hefty layer of rocks. Oh, and the liner was tucked under bigger rocks and chunks of granite. And it was all wrapped in black landscaping fabric. Removing the old pool liner would require moving the rocks, then digging out the dirt, then replacing the rocks ringing the planting area, and finally adding new soil.

Imelda, who is 68, wasn’t interested in my hemming and hawing. She donned gloves and started rolling rocks out of the way. Basketball-sized rocks. Beach-ball sized rocks. Rocks the size of Linus’ Great Pumpkin. I had no choice but to follow her example.

All day long we cut away roots and rolled rocks and dug out the dirt. Little by little, we uncovered the blue liner and worked on pulling it up. We scratched and scraped our arms, but the hard work loosened our tongues. Even the heavy lifting seemed lighter because we worked together so well. By the end of the day, we’d pulled up all the old pool liner. By the end of the next day, we had two newly refurbished garden spots that got rid of an eyesore. Even though it didn’t cost us a dime, I owe a debt of gratitude to my mother-in-law. In fact, I’ve paid garden helpers who helped a lot less. Imelda, you rock!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 8:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.