By Wayne McLaurin

University of Georgia

Volume XXVIII Number 1 Page 7

You know you’re a gardener if …

• You have an extra refrigerator for storing seed.
• You feed more than seven families with one zucchini
  plant.
• Your seed-packet collection dates back to 1976 or
  earlier.
• You get up in the middle of the night to see if your seeds
  have germinated.
• Every scratch pad in your house is filled with landscape
  ideas.
• You’ve moved a plant more than 11 times.
• Neighbors close their door when they see you coming with a
  paper sack full
  of vegetables.
• You get more than 35 seed catalogs per year.
• You’re building an extra outbuilding to house your
  gardening tools.
• You have more than one notebook filled with garden
  plans.
• Your children refuse to stop at just one more garden on
  the “vacation garden
  tour.”
• You’ve gotten a load of manure for a Christmas
  present.
• You’ve broken a truck axle hauling sand or stones for a
  walkway.
• Your garden pond is more advanced than your indoor
  plumbing.
• You’ve been brave enough to plant bamboo.
• You’ve given your wife a rototiller for your
  anniversary.
• You’ve financed a plant for more than six months.
• You have more than three compost piles in your
  backyard.
• You’ve been banned from more than two botanical trial
  gardens.
• You have a secret credit card account for fertilizer and
  plant charges.
• You’re taking Spanish classes to better understand your
  gardener.
• You’ve chained yourself to a three-year-old tomato plant
  you’re trying to
  save.
• You think that bamboo has potential as a container
  plant.
• You’ve used a sweet potato as a centerpiece at a dinner
  party.
• Collards are a necessary part of your landscape, or
  collards growing inside
  of a cut-and-painted tire are.
• You’ve put one of those stupid artificial rocks with the
  writing on it in
  your garden.
• Your encourage your spouse to go fishing to have the fish
  heads for fertilizer
  under your plants.
• You use your chipped pots for toad houses.
• You let the garden snakes stay because they eat bugs even
  though they scare
  the daylights out of you every time.
• The eating of the first tomato is ritualized with a
  candlelight dinner and
  is the only time you use an ironed, cloth tablecloth all
  year.
• They’ve reserved your parking space at the garden
  center.
• Your raised beds are better constructed than your back
  steps.
• You’ve replaced the soil in your beds with the soil
  cleaned from the back-entrance
  hallway.