Long story short, my MIL cannot just visit. She takes it upon herself to do chores at other people's houses because she can't sit still and has no boundaries (despite best efforts to set them).
The soil we have isn't the best and I've been working on improving it over the years. I planned on leaving some of the leaves in my garden beds to incorporate into the soil this year and then put in fresh mulch. I told her my plan for the garden on Thursday during their visit, because she commented on how the beds were "a mess", and on Friday when I came home from work she had taken it upon herself to RAKE my beds. I never rake. I know exactly where my perennials are and use a blower or hand pull from the bases.
She completely raked over and destroyed a patch of succulents that have been growing on their own since we moved in 5 years ago. The patch went from 2 little succulents to this lovely sq ft (give or take) of dense, happy little plants. We live in NJ, and year by year I'm always so impressed with these succulents resilience - especially after the severe winter we had this year.
Look what she did to them!!!! The last picture shows the only little succulent that made it out unscathed. This is how they all should look. I'm heartbroken and furious. Do you guys think they'll recuperate ok?
My dad is also a big gardener, and he was so flabbergasted when I told him about what she did. It's absolutely insane to me that someone would just go after someone else's garden when it's not their home and they are guests. My husband told her not to do any projects (when we first moved in they got head to toe poison ivy because she was pulling vines off a tree and dismissed me when I told her it was poison ivy), and told her I'm particular about my garden, and she just did it anyway while he had to do some computer work. I was really mad at my husband at first, too, because he knows he needs to watch this woman like a hawk when they visit - but he had to log on and said he told her to go for a walk or something if she didn't want to hang out in the house.
My in laws live very far north in New England, and they cleaned out their beds in the beginning of March, which is asinine to me since it stays freezing so long up there. So, they have NO idea what they're doing, and got their grubby mits into my garden and I'm just mad and, yet again, feeling violated by their disregard for boundaries.