You Know you're a gardener when....

Well hello Zhinu! Welcome to Daves Garden! Oy yeah, you've got the bug alright! The DG bug (Daves Garden) and the 'you know your'e a gardener when' bug!

I found this site the same way you did, and I'm a daily visitor, I dont always post daily but I'm here daily --- usually before work and again before going to sleep at night, if we were allowed to visit sites at work I'd be coming here during work hours too!

I've been a member since November of 2004 and there is so much to learn from this site, any time you have a question most gardeners are happy to help.

Have you checked out the 'extras' tab off off the main home tab? There are recipes there as well as other things.

The 'D' abbreviations..... I use 'DH' alot for 'dear hubby' , DS/DD ...son and daughter. I think there is a list on-line somewhere I'll see if I can find it for you.

You know your'e a gardener when.........there is a TV show on that you really want to watch but you see some of your plants saying...help me,help me! So instead of flopping your rear down on the couch you run around and care for the plants!

By the way, I can totally understand the 'with out money' thing, DH is disabled so we do without many things, I have alot of plant wants,wants,wants.......but I dont always get,get,get! LOL! So Daves Garden is the perfect place to trade seeds,plants,ect. I've sent and recieved seeds and I even sent some dug up horseradish to a member, it made it fine.

Enjoy DG! I gotta get ready for work! I refuse to let DG keep me from a shower! My co-workers will thank me! LOL! Jill




This message was edited Aug 30, 2005 5:43 AM

momof2d - Thank you, I haven't looked at much besides the forums and PlantFiles, I'll get around to it eventually.

I work at the Periodical help desk at Evergreen College (where I'm a student). The only rules we have, are do your work first, more or less stay at the desk, and stay awake (harder than anyone who has not had a job like this will believe). It's slow at nights, generally, and it's slow during the summer, and right now I'm working summer nights, so it can be very slow. I read most of the thread at work today.

I've actually already gotten a lot of help on the forums. Everyone has been really nice.

I also found the DH thread after I posted my earlier message here, it's located here http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/538154/ if anyone else were to ask.

Also, I posted pictures of my "garden" as it currently stands, here if anyone wants to take a look http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/541281/

LOL and welcome zhinu!

you'll love it here, great folks and lotsa help for ya!

you might also like to check out the 'dirt cheap' thread...we are ALL cheap LOLOLOL. i'm disabled now and live on about $500 a month, much like being a student again LOL. i went this past spring up the creek and 'liberated' about 100 ferns for my pondside project...flipflops, 5 gallon bucket, and a shovel.

quite a few folks from washington state too.

glad you're here, dear!

Zhinu, I love your sense of humor! I'm sure your 'cave' and porch will look like a jungle soon! Jill

I am looking at trying to introduce shade loving plants into the house. I also will have an extra room in October (my older brother/room mate graduated and is moving to Seattle to do his Masters) so I'll have a room with a window that I can leave the curtains open.

My porch is coming along, I added a neglected Ficus and rubber plant yesterday. There are pictures of them on my container garden thread (link above) I've also collected three plants for my mother. She went back to school at the local Community College about three years ago and took all the low level horticulture classes (plant care, propagation, landscaping etc.) and art classes. If she wanted to take a math class she could get her AA. I'm trying to convince her to go for her B.A. at Evergreen (where I go). Evergreen has several horticulture professors, an organic farm, a lot of interest in native plant landscaping and sustainable farming, and natural medicine. So she get all the problem plants I rescue.

I'm going to start collecting native seeds next week. I also hope to get my repotting done in the next couple weeks. I have some plants that were intended as indoor only plants, and therefore planted in no drainage pots (which I never liked, but could deal with, when they were indoor only plants) though some of them will come inside as fall comes on, due to not being hardy in our winters, the rainy season should hit before that and I don't want them to rot. I have a month off to work on this stuff starting Thursday and I am so looking forward to it. I also hope to make hand thrown pots while I'm off (my grandmother has a wheel and kiln).

and back to the topic...You know your a gardener when...
you get off the bus three stops early because you just have to know what that plant is.

you carry water up stairs from the bathroom in a gallon jug, because the water is turned off on your level and you know no one is watering the plants, even though you don't know who the plants belong to. (I’ve already rescued the ones that I knew who they belonged to, that where I got the Ficus and Rubber plant.)

"even though you don't know who the plants belong to"

I love it!!! LOL
Pati

when...you water a plant in a vacated office in your company's headquarter's building in Miami when you are there for training because it is dying. (I'm sure my generosity helped it die a week later than it would have without me. lol)

I pulled weeds from the PO's poor little flower bed last week

he he, I've been scoping out my PO's bed, too. It just takes a little climbing to get into it.

i did some weeding at a rest stop on a highway in connecticut about a month ago. :-)

When you are on a new job, in a new city, & you study the topographic maps for the area, to decide which area to look for room to grow things, while you are still living in a motel.

Please take a look at my thread Organizations trying to help in the aftermath of Katrina http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/541779/ Help if you can, pass the information on to anyone else who may help, Thank you. I'm trying to make sure as many people as possible see this, so I'm posting the link to the threads I'm watching. Sorry if you get to see it several time.

zhinu...

There is no a Hurricane Katrina FORUM.....go there and post...

Hap

And thanks from all those you can not say thanks...

But not everyone know that, the thread is in the Katrina forum

apology in advance for this post.

you know you're a gardener when.......

you make yourself take a break from all the katrina work online and walk out to your plot in the community garden...because you know it will rest and lift you just to be among the plants and smell the soil...

and there you sit, with the last of the peppers in your lap...holding your head in both hands, weeping. for all the DGers (who you hardly know yet) who have no garden. who have no home. who have lost family or friends or both. whose pets are gone. who will be so busy just surviving for gawd knows how long now that won't even be able to plan a garden over winter or spare the labor and money to garden come spring...

and here you sit, like a fool, weeping and 'sending' them all your garden...wishing to wrap them in the smell and the green and keep them safe and in hope of another garden of their own... soon soon soon.

oh let them all have the comfort of a garden again. and until then, sharing mine, in *spirit*.

We all need someway to unload all of the grief that we have at this time. All of us who can only sympathize and try to help, and those that are there now. May everyone find a "garden" of their own in this time of grief and recovery.

So, I forced myself to go to Bumpershoot (Seattle's music and art festival), the first time I've been, because I've been depressed this week, no one I directly know was hit by Katrina, but I'm bi-polar, was going into a depressive phase to begin with and Katrina hasn't helped. Sometimes just doing something helps.

So, you know you're a gardener when you go to Bumpershoot and...

come back with pictures of plants you want identified.

regret that you don't have something to collect seeds in, because no one would miss a couple berries or seed heads, and they have several plants you want.

I really liked the gardens there, most of the plants under 10 feet I like, many of them I want for my garden. The seeds I would have grabbed were the ones for the plants I wanted identified (can see here http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/542565/ ), inkberry, and orange honeysuckle (both at the right time to harvest, they are native here, but I haven't found a wild source). They also had mondo grass, iris (I'm assuming the native ones, but I'm not sure which one), and wild strawberries that I couldn't harvest but want. Then there was a couple of roses, and some nice shrubs that I didn't know what were, but weren't right for my garden. I know there were other things, but that's what I can remember. The only issue I had with their garden, was that is had bark mulch, which I hate, but I think they might be working on growing the strawberries and other ground cover to the point it will cover the bare ground, but just isn't there yet.

I also took a couple pictures of the Spaceneedle which can be seen here http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/542566/

"wishing to wrap them in the smell and the green and keep them safe and in hope of another garden of their own... soon soon soon."

((((((Wabi))))))

Pati

I love it! Be sure to check out this thread, lots of folks starting new plants to start new gardens:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/542483/

Wabi
That is one of the most beautiful tributes to gardening I have ever read.

pati, maggie, devitt---

y'all are making me cry again. it is such a gift to be understood. this place and the people in it are a rare comfort.

ok. allright. now...let's see what else we can do to help our 'washed out' friends down south! the plant fairies team thread will have em all up to their wheelbarrows in replacement plants come spring LOL, the Dmailers are about halfway home finding everyone (at day 8), our bean counters))) have a reporting and tracking system up and running for needs assessment and co ordination, we have a pile-o-Hbuddies waiting, and...what did i miss?

thank you for being you. do. not. stop.
*grin*

You know you're a gardener when...

you've saved 8 years of plant, bulb and seed catalogs, at an estimated count of 25 a year because an item might not be available in the following catalog and you might need to have the name of it.
your friend who couldn't care less about gardening just get "the look" on their faces when you innocently mention wanting to stop by the nursery for a minute;).
when you make excuses for purchases even when no one has questioned you about the purchase.
when you sit on the hot sidewalk in 95 degree heat with a paper plate and tweezers harvesting tiny little flower seeds from a moss rose plant when you can buy new seed in the spring for 99 cents a package.
when you read all 300 posts on the addiction thread and spent two thirds of the time nodding in agreement.

You know you're a gardener when...

After a brush with a hurricane, all you can think about as you drive down the road is how you can pick up all the great pine straw and leaves that are all over the place to use as mulch or to add to your compost pile!

Your last one's a hoot...

Hap

*nodding*

When in the spring you make several trips a day around you garden to see if any things coming up yet, knowing good and well it hasn't since the last time you looked 30 min. ago.

Or you sit and stare at it for 30 min. and then convince yourself it looks bigger!

I absolutely swear this is true. For our anniversary one year DH gave me a truck load of horse manure. I was thrilled. Hope I get one this year.

Helen

when you are driving down the highway past a farm and say "look at all that beautiful dirt" or when the smell of manure hits the air and your children say "yuk, what is that smell?" and you simultaneously say "ahhhhh....someone is composting...maybe they'll let me have some!"

... you are waiting for your stimulus check so you can buy an exotic Hosta!

....you pick through the trash bag in the florist section of your grocery store to find some rose stems or other plant stems you can propagate.... (guilty as charged LOL - I'm hoping the grocery store manager frequently reviews the security tapes and sees the strange man culling the floral trash to satisfy his desperate need for plants in a depressed economy).

I've actually considered going to the local florist shops and asking them to save their trash for me to pick up. I'm not always successful with getting rose stems to root, but one out of a dozen is one more rose, and the rose plant is usually a nice cultivar since it is intended for the florist trade. One success I had was rooting a broken stem from 'Essence of Truth' rose. It is growing well, but hasn't flowered for me yet.

Jeremy

lol... Jeremy do those Air potatoes grow around Jacksonville? Its that vine they are burning in florida because its so invasive.

Unfortunately, yes they do.

Maggie

I have not yet eradicated all the air potatoes (Dioscorea bulberifera http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/32235/ ) from my yard. They were here when I bought the house and have remained as entrenched invaders. Once established, they are very difficult to eliminate because any part of the root will grow a new vine and the "air potatoes" will root wherever they fall.

I haven't heard of any burning of the vines. Our weather has been so dry here this spring that I would be surprised if any controlled burns were occurring, but I don't watch the TV news much (too busy keeping up with the "recent developments" in my garden. LOL).

Jeremy

City,

The burning vines may be the kudzu vines. They are not nice either.

Hap

I am looking for someone who will box them up and ship them to me. Or I could come get them ... if you know of anyone let me know and I will pay for them.

> you know you're a gardener when ...

When my husband says that I went through the Five Stages of Grief after my Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy' died.

When all my reading material is nothing but plant and gardening and horticultural books.

When I feel a physical leap in my heart when a plant blooms.

When I am digging trenches around the perimeter of my garden beds and sift through the dirt I'm tossing for any worms (to put back into the garden).

When I am at work, and all I can think about is getting home and touching dirt.

YEH>>>>