Those are some big Incrediballs!

Last year my mom and I had a little to see who could grow more tomatoes at our shared community garden plot. I don’t remember who won. I’m not sure anybody did. Tomatoes were plentiful last year, unlike this year, so really we all won.

Suffice to say, our family is just a wee bit competitive. Anyone who can turn gardening into a competition obviously likes to win.

I sent this photo to my mom to brag about the size of my Incrediball hydrangea blooms. I also shared it on Instagram and Facebook so if you want to follow all my plant touching exploits, you can do that there.

So I guess I shouldn’t been surprised when I sent my mom a photo of my feeling up the largest of the Incrediball hydrangea blooms in my year and I got this reply.

Oh, game on, Mom. Game on.

So like any self-respecting overly competitive daughter I decided to take care of this “Mine’s bigger” discussion immediately. No need to let this sort of thing fester.

I measured the biggest Incrediball bloom I could find: 11.5 inches in diameter. For reference, a basketball has a diameter of 9.39 inches.

I figured there was no way my mom’s bloom could be bigger than that. In order to get photographic proof (I wasn’t just going to blindly trust her measuring), I ran out to her house. And there I saw an enormous Incrediball hydrangea with probably 20 larger-than-a-basketball-sized flowers. (This is the part where I point out that she bought her Incrediball hydrangea as a two-gallon plant at about the same time I bought my little pint-sized Incrediballs. So you know, pretty much she’s cheating smart.)

My mom’s Incrediball hydrangea.

I knew I was in trouble.

Sure enough. The biggest bloom I could find (and trust me it was hard figuring out which one was the biggest) was 12.5 inches in diameter.