People walk past my house all the time in my neighborhood and stop to admire my small garden (primarily the front and side of my house and my containers).  Sometimes they ask me “How do you do it?”.  I always have to stop myself from saying “It’s helps to be psychotically obsessive”.  What I usually say is more diplomatic along the lines of “I water a lot” or “it’s my hobby” but the truth is a bit darker I’m afraid.  I am obsessed with plants, flowers in particular.  While everyone agrees it’s good to have a hobby, sometimes I think I take it a bit too far.  A few of the things that exemplify this:

—I don’t like to go on vacation during growing season because I don’t like leaving my plants

—I would never get a dog because dogs can dig and one of my neighbors is always telling me about the destruction her crazy German shepherd is wrecking on her backyard (he ate all my petunias!  He ate the baby Aspen tree! etc..) I know I would probably have palpitations should such a thing occur in my yard so I just steer clear.  Fortunatley my kid only likes cats.

—I wanted a house with a very small yard because I knew if I got a house with even a medium sized yard I would probably drive myself insane (I do a pretty good job as it is with a lot of around 4500 sq feet).

—I’ve run out in golf ball sized hail to protect my container plants

—In May and June, I went to at least 8 different nurseries (multiple times each) looking for exactly the plants I wanted

—I was shocked when a fellow less hard core gardener in my neighborhood hadn’t thought about the annuals we might put in our pocket park.  It was March when I asked her.