“Mother Was Right”, a copyrighted post, was written for my WordPress blog called Always Growing by Jan in Covington, Louisiana
Mother was right. It just took twenty-five years to show she was right.
Many years ago, my mother shared some of her Walking Iris (Neomarica gracillis) with me. She gave me a small container of them and said to protect them in the winter as they could be killed by a freeze. I put the pot of irises in the garden for the summer and forgot to take them in for the winter, but they survived with no damage whatsoever. They gradually spread around and covered a very large area. They survived short freezes and long freezes, and I thought my mother was wrong about their hardiness.
In fact, they became so crowded last year that I knew I would have to dig a great many up. Hating to just throw away good plants, I tried to find someone to take them, but was unable. Time got away from me, and these irises never got dug up. During last fall, I was lamenting the overcrowded bed and made a resolution to start removing plants as soon as it warmed up. It is a good thing I never got around to thinning out that bed because this winter – Mom was right.
I couldn’t believe the damage. I think I was left with about 20% of the plants. I feel that many of the irises that didn’t make it were the “babies” that didn’t get a chance to root because of the overcrowding. I still can’t believe that so many of these plants died this winter. They have really survived bad winters before.
I was not too upset to lose so many plants because it seems as if Old Man Winter just saved me the job of thinning out the overcrowded plants. I was disappointed that there were no blooms this spring. Usually there are scores of blooms, and it is such a pretty sight. Since these normally bloom in the spring, I was surprised to see one flower this week, the middle of June.
The remaining plants are starting to recover, but without flowers, there will be no spreading. You can be sure that I will be digging up a clump to overwinter just in case we get another winter like this last one since I would hate to lose plants my mother gave me that are so pretty. Besides, I just can’t stand to hear her say “I told you so” even if it took 25 years to prove her right.