Compulsive Gardening – The Quiet Addiction
You know you are a compulsive gardener and probably ready to be the topic of an Oprah show when:
- At the beginning of the season, you order 100 plant tags and think, “Great, I’ll have enough for years…” By the end of the season you are ordering more. And you only tag half your plants. You try not to think too hard on this.
- Every time you dig a hole, you hit a rock. Instead of making a huge rock pile, you drop the rocks along your garden paths to line it, what else do you do with extra rocks? One day you realize you’ve created 2 acres of a complex system of rock lined paths…and try not to think of how many holes you’ve dug.
- You stopped reading plant tags in nurseries long ago. They are wrong.
- You chase wood chip trucks. Gleefully, mad-person style, with suitable-for-institutionalizing fervor. Wood chip truck drivers send their rookies in your direction for a laugh. (you do this – admit it!)
- When asking for a particular plant at a nursery, you think you might pronounce the Latin incorrectly so you spell it for them. Correctly. Otherwise you can’t spell for beans.
- You propagate everything in sight to give away. You just don’t see how anyone can live a full life without (insert favorite plant name here) in their yard. The size of your cutting bed is starting to rival the square footage of your house.
For wildlife gardeners -
- You leave that dead, awful looking volunteer thistle where it is because a female praying mantis lives on it and dangit it she won’t move. She just looks at you every time you approach her dead thistle. You let the thistle grow there in the first place for the goldfinches and you know you’ll pay next year when thistle comes up everywhere. (hardcore version: in the winter, before you pull it, you’ll check for overwintering mantis eggs).
- That overcrowded blueberry colony you planned to thin out gets left alone. You know there are box turtles in there, and well, they don’t breed frequently, and they lay eggs and bury them! You could step on the eggs!
- Critters for miles think you are a vegetarian even if you aren’t. They show you no respect. As that squirrel runs off with another one of your tomatoes, you shake your fist in the air and bellow, “I’m the top of the food chain! I’m an omnivore! I will grind yer wee bones and sprinkle them on a salad for lunch!” The squirrel gives you an off-hand gesture which may be interpreted as a bored, “Speak to the tiny paw”.
- You almost piddled yourself with happiness when you discovered that yes, you do have a king snake living on your property. (This will save you potential legal hassles of stealing one and importing to your yard. Makes “what are you in for” embarrassing. After all the snake you stole from the park doesn’t even have fangs).
- One morning you discover a favorite plant has been completely mauled by some insect and you’re thrilled. You hope it’s the caterpillar of the (insert favorite butterfly name here) which has munched your shrub to a nub. (hardcore version: you look around for caterpillar poop and know exactly what it looks like).
For native gardeners:
- You mail order everything because local nurseries have never heard of that common-as-dirt plant you want.
- People stop by your house and ask you what that common-as-dirt plant is – it’s beautiful and they’ve never seen anything like it! (refer to above propagation habits. Give visitor a plant or five).
- Unless you have a case of Builders Scrape, you don’t amend soil. Your plant wants to grow in exactly the type of soil you already have.
- You don’t prune anything. Your plants don’t need to have an annual hacking to grow the way they should – they just do what they are supposed to. You don’t stake plants. They know how to stand up. If you do prune, it’s just your inner control freak dictating the direction the plant grows in.
- Aside from keeping them from being smothered by invasives, your plants don’t need you. They are perfectly capable of creating their own compost, establishing appropriate root systems and surviving on natural rainfalls in normal years. They can handle (native) bug plagues and (native) fungus onslaughts, whatever is naturally thrown at them. You compost anyway out of a need to feel needed.
-You know the difference between Good Bugs and Bad Bugs and grit your teeth, tell yourself that the Great Golden Digger Wasp is a Good Bug even if it flies in your face and scares the peas out of you. Your mantra becomes “It’s just curious. It eats Bad Bugs. It’s just curious. It eats Bad Bugs…” You refrain from creating a small scale nuclear winter over it’s nest with insecticide. (Exception: cockroaches. Feel free to nuke away. Bad Gross Bug).
- Your neighbor can’t figure out why you have so many birds and butterflies in your yard and they don’t. Your neighbor has a huge lawn, english ivy and three ornamental cherries – along with a lot of Japanese beetles. (refer to above propagation habits. Give neighbor a plant or five).
- You don’t have a lot of undesirable bugs – there’s no good food in your yard, just lots of birds which will eat them. Bugs all go to your neighbors yard.
You followed me on Twitter. Your tweets interested me, so I logged on to have a look at your blog. I have found a kindred spirit. I wish you lived here instead of an ocean away because I am sure you would help me try to save street trees from the chop. I need people like you. Yours is a wonderful blog. I am now a follower of you, both blog & Twitter.
Jacqueline
http://savingourtrees.wordpress.com/
Ha ha!! Thanks for the laugh! Hear hear for hands-off gardening! I too have left a thistle “for the goldfinches” and promised myself to pull it up ‘later’ (and didn’t)..
Signed
A Hard Core Habitat Gardener