Favorites - another forum sucking me in!

12 years ago

Gardening is a CHORE! Five years ago I only started gardening because I couldn't afford a landscaper and figured my kids needed some of the character building treatment I was raised with.
This early Spring I noticed a definite thrill when I saw the stores with garden centers (that I was already haunting) start preparing to receive nursery stock for the season. I have favorite greenhouses and when I need serious stress relief I go to them to browse around. I never go shopping without exploring every bit of the store's gardening department. I spend hours researching the next project. I keep digging up plants and moving them to better spots (ok, I have my boys do it). There isn't room in the garden beds for all the plants so a bunch are being nursed in pots while they wait for a new home. I even have a holding garden. Decided to start landscaping the yard at our business; it needs it and I need a place to put the extra plants... but now I have to figure out how to frugally get a whole bunch more. I read GardenWeb threads to my DH and kids when we're in the car and they can't escape.
What the heck? Now I'm composting!
Something is seriously wrong! Either I like gardening after all or it turned into some really inconvenient compulsion.
Here's to another new season!
Kay

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Comments (4)

sylviatexas1
12 years ago
You can't be cured unless you want to be cured, & nobody here has any concept of wanting to be cured!

Welcome to the best obsessive/compulsive habit in the world!
Bloomin_Onion
12 years ago
OMG this sounds like me!!... aaaand maybe the rest of us Hahaha!! I have my very first garden this year and now even though it's too late to plant any of the summer plants and a whole lot of nursery stock is gone from the shelves (I live in southern Canada so frost comes in October and by December it's -40*F) I still can't help myself going down to the nurseries and just walking for hours. It's especially dazzling in march and april when all the stock is fresh, things are blooming and there's that "cut grass smell" that nurseries tend to get when hundreds of baby plants are being manhandled and profusely watered every day. We had a very hot beginning to this summer season up here and I would go and get starbucks, and drive with the windows down to the mile or so of nursery after nursery we have just outside of town and prepare to get my zen in for the day! The areas for outdoor plants are covered with a plastic type of material secured with some kind of pvc type of tresses big and tall, and outdoor warehouse. In the morning with the smell of coffee in my mouth I'd walk around the freshly sprayed plants, dripping water on the concrete cooling my sandals and making the air crispy. Is there any better place outside of a royal british garden than a well kept nursery in the spring? I think not! It only adds to the ambiance that tiny sparrows love the cool shade and plants, and sing all day long lol
God help me save my money in the face of gardening!!
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Suzi AKA DesertDance So CA Zone 9b
12 years ago
It is definitely a disease! I can't believe we now have a compost bin, and I have garbage in a bowl sitting on my kitchen counter attracting fruit flies... I HATE it, but the it's good for the compost...

My addiction began with fig cuttings. I really don't like figs, well, not the one my grandma had, but I didn't know some taste like strawberries.... We now have 20 fig trees, and I now am not so anal about the cuttings living or dying. I lay them in the dirt buried a half inch and if they grow, they grow. If not, I don't have every counter filled with baby trees.

BUT, learning to sprout cuttings of figs, made me try sprouting wine grape cuttings. We now have a small vineyard... OH just looked up how to propagate mums. We received one as a gift last year, and now it's blooming in summer. I'd like to repeat that plant elsewhere..

I find propagating plants interesting. My little hobby led us to move from a small yard to 1.5 acres!

It is a CHORE, but a fun one!
kay21_utahzone5b
Original Author
12 years ago
What's that saying? "A garden is never finished until the gardener is planted?" I can relate to that, but don't consider myself to know enough to be called a gardener. Last year I had reconstruction on each hand and scheduling those surgeries was all about how to least disrupt the gardening.
Bloomin' - You're beautifully poetic! Is a royal british garden anything like Butchart Gardens? We were there three years ago: so green and lush up there, Incredible! But I wasn't so obsessed at that time. We went to Disney Land last month and I touched and examined just about every plant! Embarrassed my teens.
Desert Dance - I've just taken up propagating, too. Spring pruned my Rose of Sharon and planted 6 sticks in the ground. My little grandson sometimes manages to pull a couple up but they're starting to grow leaves anyway! I have a bunch of cuttings in sand, covered with plastic and figure if they don't take root I haven't lost anything. I think it's time to start potting up those that have rooted (another variety of Rose of Sharon, Sonic Bloom Wiegelas, lilacs, and Bloodgood - I don't think any of the Bloodgood worked).
I've been jealous of both your climates! It's really dry here and I'm always trying to figure out how to have the landscape I want without using much water. There was a lot growing in Canada and California that I wanted, but when we came home this last trip I looked around and realized there's a lot I don't want to give up.
Love that there is something to plant wherever we live!
Kay