My marriage would be better if we didn't have a garden.

That's because the garden is overwhelming for both of us.

Normally we have clear areas of competence in our relationship: My husband repairs things, I run the household.

Neither of us have a clue about the garden, but we draw different conclusions from it: I openly admit it.

My husband doesn't.

He thinks he's a really good gardener.

He doesn't say where he gets his assessment from.

This summer our hedge dried up.

Then there are our mothers. Both have beautiful gardens and a lot of knowledge. Every now and then they visit us, and then my mother-in-law says sentences like: "If you are not careful, the garden will grow into the house." She looks at me alone, even though her son sits at the table on such occasions. Sometimes my mother also says something, which is more likely to work against my husband. The last time she complained was when he mistook a delphinium, which she had brought with her and planted recently, to be weed and pulled it out.

My husband and I also talk about our garden.

These are no great moments in our marriage.

I always urge that we employ a gardener.

My husband thinks it's too expensive.

Then this spring I just let someone come for a few hours on a trial basis, and my husband was thrilled with how quickly this gardener got to grips with the thicket.

She was allowed to come back and even put an irrigation system.

In retrospect, that was the beginning of the end of our hedge.

The hedge suffered from a lack of care

It's such a thing with irrigation systems. You have to program it. A small control center is now stuck to our tap next to the terrace, and the garden hose runs from there to the entrance of the irrigation system. This results in two things: Firstly, you can't do anything else with the hose, i.e. you can't fill a watering can or walk around with it to water beds. It would first have to be laboriously unscrewed from the system.

Second, the irrigation system will only start if it has been programmed accordingly.

My husband claims that he understood the principle and has an overview of the pouring rhythm.

I myself printed out the operating instructions, which are only available online, and believe that I have understood how to program them.

The result was that we both alternately pushed around on the control center and were annoyed with each other.

Then we both lost interest at the same time.

And nobody took care of it anymore.

Finally, when the hedge was a bit bare, but not yet yellow, we went on vacation, and when we came back it happened.