The Slice: The green thrill of victory

It didn’t start out as a contest.

And I’m not sure it really is now. All I know is we’re winning.

(Insert obnoxious sports-fan taunting here.)

You know those boxes of flower bulbs some of us received at Christmas? The ones that come with a pot and package of soil? Sure. Well, how are yours doing seven weeks later?

Ours are doing great. The ones belonging to my relatives in Michigan? Not so much.

That’s sort of sad because we got our four bulbs from them as a gift. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law bought a similar box for themselves at the same time.

Something tells me it is less than gracious to mock the very people who gave you a gift. But the tentative green shoots emerging from their bulbs have been so runty compared to ours that, well, it’s hard to suppress a smile.

This is especially difficult now that they are cheating.

Oh, that might sound harsh. And as I love them both dearly, it might seem churlish for me to level such a charge.

But what would you call it if your bulbs were producing tall, luxuriant stalks (and all you were adding to the pot was water) while your horticultural rivals in the Midwest had resorted to plant food-doping and re-potting?

OK, perhaps it was wrong of me to suggest during a phone call that their four bulbs are using performance enhancing substances while our four test clean.

I have tried to be a gentleman about this. The other night, while my wife and her mother were having a video chat on the phone, I took a look at the plants back in Michigan.

“Bless their little hearts,” I said.

Condescending? I have no idea what you mean.

Admittedly, our wildly different experiences with the flower bulbs could be seen as a simple matter of luck. But I believe it’s something else.

I think our bulbs really like Spokane. Maybe it’s the dry air here. Or perhaps the invigorating water.

It could be that the angle of our northern sunlight has been the difference. (Where my in-laws live in Michigan is way south of Spokane, latitude-wise.)

Or maybe their stunted plants are afraid of the enormous formerly feral cat in residence back there. I just don’t know.

It’s silly to think of this as a race, I know. Besides, I need to appreciate the gift and remember to thank my in-laws for sending us the vastly superior set of bulbs.

Today’s Slice question: What if the Evergreen State were named after Lincoln instead of Washington?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. How many 1981 Spokane centennial commemorative medallions are still out there?