37 Ways to Know You’re Addicted to Gardening

Got this from Mike McGroarty: 37 Ways to Know You’re Addicted to Gardening

1. Your neighbors recognize you in your pajamas, rubber clogs, and a cup of coffee.

 

2. You grab other people’s banana peels, coffee grinds, apple cores, etc. for your compost pile.

 

3. You have to wash your hair to get your fingernails clean.

 

4. All your neighbors come and ask you questions.

 

5. You know the temperature of your compost every day.

 

6. You buy a bigger truck so that you can haul more mulch.

 

7. You enjoy crushing Japanese beetles because you like the sound that it makes.

 

8. Your boss makes "taking care of the office plants" an official part of your job description.

 

9. Everything you touch turns to "fertilizer".

 

10. Your non-gardening spouse becomes conversant in botanical names.

 

11. You find yourself feeling leaves, flowers and trunks of trees wherever you go, even at funerals.

 

12. You dumpster-dive for discarded bulbs after commercial landscapers remove them to plant annuals.

 

13. You plan vacation trips around the locations of botanical gardens, arboreta, historic gardens, etc.

 

14. You sneak home a 7 foot Japanese Maple and wonder if your spouse will notice.

 

15. When considering your budget, plants are more important than groceries.

 

16. You always carry a shovel, bottled water and a plastic bag in your trunk as emergency tools.

 

17. You appreciate your Master Gardener badge more than your jewelry.

 

18. You talk “dirt” at baseball practice.

 

19. You spend more time chopping your kitchen greens for the compost pile than for cooking.

 

20. You like the smell of horse manure better than Estée Lauder.

 

21. You rejoice in rain… even after 10 straight days of it.

 

22. You have pride in how bad your hands look.

 

23. You have a decorative compost container on your kitchen counter.

 

24. You can give away plants easily, but compost is another thing.

 

25. Soil test results actually mean something.

 

26. You understand what IPM means and are happy about it.

 

27. You’d rather go to a nursery to shop than a clothes store.

 

28. You know that Sevin is not a number.

 

29. You take every single person who enters your house on a “garden tour”.

 

30. You look at your child’s sandbox and see a raised bed.

 

31. You ask for tools for Christmas, Mother/Father’s day, your Birthday, and any other occasion you can think of.

 

32. You can’t bear to thin seedlings and throw them away.

 

33. You scold total strangers who don’t take care of their potted plants.

 

34. You know how many bags of fertilizer/potting soil/mulch your car will hold.

 

35. You drive around the neighborhood hoping to score extra bags of leaves for your compost pile.

 

36. Your preferred reading matter is seed catalogs.

 

And last but not least:

 

37. You know that the four seasons are:


 » Planning the Garden

 » Preparing the Garden

 » Gardening

 » Preparing and Planning for the next Garden


(Author: Unknown, I’d love to give credit to the rightful author.)

Comments

  • Monek Marie
    Monek Marie Posts: 3,539 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Coffee cups are all in the garden

    If they don't know where you are they head to the garden

    You ide the last packs of seeds you bought when you get home (why bother> They can count the ones you have now)

    The day the greenhouses open is considered a holiday

  • MaryRowe
    MaryRowe Posts: 736 ✭✭✭✭

    What a great and true list!

    It will make for a lively contest with this group: how high do you score and how many more can you come up with?

  • shllnzl
    shllnzl Posts: 1,820 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Some of the above are certainly true for me. I can add a few:

    Your neighbors know your bed head look because you are seen transferring your frost sensitive plant pots every winter day from the garage into the sunlight as soon as the temperature allows.

    Your husband is afraid to take you to the hardware store because most likely you will return with a plant, usually saving it from the death shelf.

    You have embarrassed yourself with neighbors by asking for potted plants before they can abandon them to die.

    The neighbors also think you are weird because you have to let weeds grow long enough to determine if they are a medicinal herb.

  • Lisa K
    Lisa K Posts: 1,935 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I don't get banana peels from my neighbors but I do get coffee grounds from my dad and Starbucks 😀

  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Only about a third of those apply to me so I'm not addicted, right? I don't have a problem... 😉

  • MaryRowe
    MaryRowe Posts: 736 ✭✭✭✭

    @Michelle D It's no use counting--"you're known by the company you keep"😁

    If you weren't already seed- and gardening-addicted by the time you joined TGN, it doesn't take long......😊

  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @MaryRowe I consider myself to be in good company 😁

    I was a bit addicted when I found this group. I would have to say I am lot more now. You are all enablers! And I love ya for it. 😋

  • Tave
    Tave Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm guilty of almost all of them. And yes, @shllnzl, if weeds grow instead of what I planted, I wait until I know if they're useful or not.

  • Cornelius
    Cornelius Posts: 872 ✭✭✭✭

    I have one to add:

    You have too many seeds. Just kidding, you can never have to many seeds!!!

  • judsoncarroll4
    judsoncarroll4 Posts: 5,490 admin

    I transplanted 40 trees today.... would have to be hooked to endure such pain!

  • Annie Kate
    Annie Kate Posts: 680 ✭✭✭✭

    Love that list--some of them I do already, some of them are great advice for the upcoming gardening season! Some of them I wish I dared to do.

    For our anniversary, we give each other soil. Or, last year, manure. Our friends think we are nuts.

  • Megan Venturella
    Megan Venturella Posts: 678 ✭✭✭✭

    And here I thought I was unique! LOL I guess it’s good knowing I’m not the only one. My greenhouse isn’t up yet and I feel like I’m in mourning.

  • Monek Marie
    Monek Marie Posts: 3,539 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2021

    @Megan Venturella My greenhouse is not going yet either and It makes the days longer. I feel your pain. Late February and March go so much faster if you can hang out in a greenhouse

  • Monek Marie
    Monek Marie Posts: 3,539 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2021

    @Cornelius If you saw my seed stash, you might change your mind on too many seeds. But I do seed swaps, give to a seed bank and give to out local food pantries.

    Hmmm, sounds like denial.

  • MissPatricia
    MissPatricia Posts: 318 ✭✭✭

    I certainly do a lot of those. I think gardening every day and am eager to get home from vacation to start seeds in the house so they are ready for the garden mid-to-late April. I also have to try really hard not to talk gardening to everyone I meet. It is definitely an addiction that I am glad that I have.

  • COWLOVINGIRL
    COWLOVINGIRL Posts: 954 ✭✭✭✭

    This is great! I can identify with #20 & #27!

  • flowerpower *
    flowerpower * Posts: 258 ✭✭✭

    @judsoncarroll4 Your list is Too Funny.

    🥀To calm yourself and drift off to sleep you think of your garden.

    💫Being rolled into surgery, you imagine all the beautiful flower gardens you have seen to uplift yourself.

  • nicksamanda11
    nicksamanda11 Posts: 755 ✭✭✭✭

    Every random board I see on the side of the road could contribute to a raised bed box.

    When i see large piles of trees i think they should be covered in dirt and made into a hugelkultur bed.

    I spend hours trying to figure out how to turn dog poop into something useful for the garden- despite the majority saying there's no use. I may have figured it out- bury it 3 feet down- but my dogs poop alot and that's a butt ton of holes to dig on my 1/3 acre in the city. Some day I'll figure it out....

  • jowitt.europe
    jowitt.europe Posts: 1,465 admin

    What an excellent list! I like the staste nose of humour in it! Well my neighbours definitely know I am a gardener! 😊

  • Cornelius
    Cornelius Posts: 872 ✭✭✭✭

    @nicksamanda11 There is a way to compost it, but you have to make sure the temps get high enough in the core to kill the bad bacteria. Here is a link about it: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-28/dont-waste-your-dogs-poo-compost-it/10668760

  • Cornelius
    Cornelius Posts: 872 ✭✭✭✭

    @Denise Grant That is so cool! But I think that unless you have enough to be Noah's Ark of seeds, then there's still room to add! lol

  • SuperC
    SuperC Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭

    Great list. I do a lot of them, especially in p.j.s out early in the a.m. either sniffing the air or walking the yard. Yesterday I noticed a white and gray hairball. It looked like the tail of a bunny rabbit close to the bottom of our compost pile. It’s not enclosed yet a pile of food scrapes, wood ash, leaves, grass clippings, sticks broken up and so animals can frequent the pile. Then a few feet from the pile was a matted tuft of gray hair, must have been that rabbit and a large predatory bird got it. We have five chihuahuas, now we’re on the alert as spring is approaching and large birds of prey are hungry.

    Lovely red-headed woodpeckers are performing mating rituals. Their flying about and chirps caught the attention of PennyLu, a puppy. She sat there, near the compost pile looking up i to the pinetrees watching the birds flit back and forth, she move her head and cock her head to one side.