Linda,

Yes, I'm sure that people think I'm obsessed (I have around 350+/-, and that's down from a few years ago...) But that's how a lot of people are about their hobbies. My sis-in-law is a knitter (or is it crocheting??) and my brother says if she finds a deal on yarn, she goes nuts and spends a fortune to get every color imaginable. My husband is a motorcycle nut, and he subscribes to nearly every magazine about cycling, and changing things about his Harley is a never-ending obsession. My mom is crazy about outdoor gardening and can't wait to get her hands in the dirt come spring. But I always feel sorry for people who don't have a hobby, because when their kids are up and out, what do they have??

I can't imagine life without plants and it's weird when I walk into someone's house and there's not one plant. My nephew and his wife just moved into a new home they had built. It has SO many great windows - not a plant to be seen in the place. All I can think is, "What a terrible waste of all these beautiful windows!"

Denise in Omaha

Hi Denise, I agree with you about people not having hobbies and what do they do..I am like your mom I can't wait for spring and working/playing outside, my son is into the harleys too, and hubby and sons are into tractors they have 5 lots to do and have fun....they don't say much about my plants, plants only take up a couple of windows, their tractors need 2 garages...lol.... heres a pic of the cactus I got from you last year..their growing fine..
{{gwi:526849}}
their getting tall I'll have to fine a new place for them next fall I'm sure at the rate they are growing they will be to tall for the kitchen window.....linda

My neighbors have said some very nice things about my succulents and cacti. I've been incorporating them in the landscape. The plants, not my neighbors, I mean. The compliments are unexpected because most of the neighbors are not plant people.

My three female housemates think I'm a little nutty, but they generally like the plants. Except they're always trying to get me to grow more flowers. I've been planting a few drought-tolerant species like Salvia gregii, verbena and California poppies to appease them, but there's still not a lot of flower color out there.

I'm trying to get my wife more interested. Whenever we go to a nursery, I ask her to pick out a plant she likes. This weekend she picked an interesting variegated euphorbia.

In my opinion, you're either a plant person or not. Non-plant people don't seem to even look at plants. They really can't tell a blade of grass from a dandelion leaf. They could walk by a baobob tree at the North Pole and not notice anything unusual.

"They could walk by a baobob tree at the North Pole and not notice anything unusual."

Isn't that the truth!

During my Freshmen year in college I had 64+ plants in my half of the dorm room. I love both indoor and outdoor gardening. My grandpa would let me have input as to what I wanted in the family garden. We referred to it as "Germany" because my grandpa is the 3rd generation of his family to be in the U.S. from Germany. It is 2.3 acres. I'd want to order in January when the seed catalogs came in and I wanted to plant *now*, but he always had to take the wind out of my sails telling me we had to wait 'til May when the danger of frost has decreased considerably. A few years later we expanded Germany to be 7 acres. I had my own flower garden and did all the work myself at 13 years of age. I had to dig up the 6' x 13' area with a spade and break up the clods with a rake. It was great and I never minded a thing - it's so rewarding that way. Everyone who came to the farm got a tour. It was my sanctuary.

I can't wait to buy a house so our yard can by my sanctuary again!

My husband is not from a horticultural family at all. It feels desolate and depressing at my inlaws' home. My husband is very understanding of my love of Horticulture. He's a gearhead and loves his tools and car parts. We fix cars together; it's our "together" hobby. I can even wrench too; thanks to the training from my dad. He felt it was important for me to know and I wanted to learn. My husband now goes looking for plants for me when he goes to the stores! What a man!

I also have about 350 potted plants, more or less, plus outdoor gardens. I am fortunate in that I teach and have access to some nice artificial light set-ups at work.

My wife constantly tells me that I am "cute" about the plants. She gets a little impatient about the dirt that gets tracked into the house (from both me and my son)... About March she was very emphatic I should fix a few things indoors, because she knew that once the ground thawed I was going to want to spend all my spare time outside.

My husband had NO idea what he was getting into when he married me. I set shop lights and shelves up in our living room and dining room and crammed as many "green things" as humanly possible onto them with a sprinkling of other plants all over every flat surface throughout the house.
He is plant illiterate and even replanted a plant that our dog dug up, upside down. He thinks I am a bit crazy but tolerates my obsession. :)
I keep trying to draw him and our two children into my world, but so far only our teenaged son with autism is mildly interested. He even took a class in greenhouse/property management this semester in school, but is more interested in Godzilla (his passion) than plants.
One of my biggest problems is seeing a plant, buying it, and then wanting as many different types of that plant I can find, and hence begin a new collection....I have a lot of "collections". The "water plant collection", the "hoya collection", the "succulent collection" (my largest), the "orchid collection" (whittled down to just over 40 plants from over a thousand), the "AV collection" (went overboard there too and became an "AV snob" with no unnamed plants allowed. but now only have 2 named and 5 unnamed), the "citrus collection", the "euphorbia collection", and on and on and on....
So....am I nuts?....YES, but happily so. :)

Kathy

My ex and best friends call me Stanley...from the Little Shop of Horrors. I only have like 20 C&S and now some annuals that are waiting to go outside. I do have the reputation of the one with the green thumb though and get requests to try growing things from seeds from people when they've had little success and my ex's sister asked me this morning if I would help her re-do her small backyard. The funny thing is that I don't really have that much of a green thumb but I am a scientist and owning a plant is like an experiment to me.

Everyone around me seems to be rather tolerant, even supportive of our obsession. My wife is, and always has been very encouraging. In the end, it is a rather "pretty" hobby, even if some of the plants are ugly. And all my junk is outside, so it never really gets in her way. I'm sure she figures its better than sitting around playing video games or watching TV, and it is cheaper than a lot of other things I'm interested in. The person who I worry about most, my landlord, has been just terrific. When one of the servicemen my landlady hired accidentally knocked over a pot and broke it, she quickly replaced it with another. Living in an apartment means I share my outdoor space with three other units, which has limited my collection to about 300 plants at the moment. Slowly, but surely, I've been taking over all of the free space outside, filling it with racks of plants. My neighbors seem to tolerate it alright. I never really get any positive comments, but they never, ever complain either.

I used to grow over 100 rose bushes and now I'm down to 14. Whatever I do now looks tame. My Plant interests are ever broadening. I'm not sure what my neighbors think. I think most of them wish they had the nerve to do what I did to my front yard. I took out the turf and put in a couple of trees some shrubs, clumping grass and ground covers. My yard doesn't require as much water as theirs and still looks good. We are in a major water shortage but we got 1.5 inches today!
It's what goes on BEHIND the fence that is fun!
My family knows I'm a plant nut although I seem to be getting nuttier with age. I hang out with Master Gardeners and rose growers and orchid lovers so I fit right in.
I have 30 plus succulents/cactus (I'm a newbie)in pots
about 40 hoya in pots, 30 orchids and a bunch of misc. stuff.
My house is really dark and I don't have plants inside like I did at my old house. I have a screened patio loaded with plants. I am sure if I was in a colder climate I'd have to have plants inside during the winter or I'd just go crazy!

I only have a modest 60-or-so plants on two, two-shelved shelving units fitted with grow lights right now. I live in a rather small windowless basement suite so I don't have many options. Most of my plants are in 2-4in. pots because I had to start my collection all over again 3 times 'cause I kept moving and wasn't able to bring my plants with me. The oldest plant I have now is just over 2 years...however we are moving to a bigger place that's packed with windows at the end of the month and I'm totally bringing all my plants with me no matter what anyone says. My husband is quite supportive of my plant obssession and he's bought me a couple here and there, but he knows I'm kinda picky about the plants that I buy so he usually makes sure I'm around to choose the one I want.

But he still hasn't bought me and Orchid! *Evil glare* My mother however is totally into plants as well (she's the one that got me into them so long ago), and she's been growing them way longer than I have yet my thumb seems to be greener than hers. Hehe. Whenever a plant that she has isn't doing too well, she'll either ask me about it or give it to me to bring back to life. Whenever she comes over to visit, her and I will talk and talk and talk about plants and the hubby just kind of does his own little thing on the computer.

I don't really have any specific collections (C&S is the largest I've got with a pitiful 10-or-so I think). I just buy whatever catches my fancy that I know I can care for. Seeing as how I'm so short on space though I usually try to limit myself to buying 1 or 2 plants a month. This way I can steadily add to my collection without overwhelming myself too fast. I would be putting dents in the walls with my head if I couldn't grow my plants!

Several of my relatives have some interest in plants, but not nearly as much as me. My mother and grandmother (not on same sides of the family) both enjoy houseplants a lot, but are terrible at it. My grandmother insists on putting plants on shelves in her very dark living room and dining room (where the shades are always pulled down), and then they gradually die. My mother is not quite as oblovious, but is badly hampered by a house without a lot of appropriate windows.

On the other hand my dad has always loved growing vegetables, but is not noticeably interested in houseplants. He likes flowers reasonably well, so he does all the work outside (my mother seems to like the idea of flowers but won't get dirty). There are all kinds.

Hi all and thank you for contributing to this thread it great reading, I hope more add on....thank you all again...linda

Bunny - You must be excited to move from a basement suite to a place with great windows! When my husband and I went looking for houses 22 years ago, we each had our agendas - his was a garage he could work with (mind you, we were looking in OLD neighborhoods...) and mine was a place that had lots of windows and was very bright. We looked at several and when we walked into this one, we both KNEW it was THE one! It's just a little 2-bedroom bungalow, but it has 23 windows - 8 of them in a small sunroom off the livingroom. (Oh, and the garage is ok, too...**Yawn**)

And it's obvious wherever I go what my obsession is...
{{gwi:526850}}
(The background of our plates have changed since I took this pic, but I've had this "number" for over 10 years...)

Denise in Omaha

There's always room for just one more plant .... or maybe 6 or 7.

Mike

I found that my "hobby" of cactus/plants was getting out of hand so I started looking at it closer and decided it was becoming an addiction. I've now cut back on my obsession to just a few select plants. I look for only the most unusual looking cactus/plants. Besides, in the winter, it was becoming quite a job bringing them all in... 2 1/2 hours? That was ridiculous!