Flower Hoarding

I don't normally get into online arguments, especially now that vegetrollians have gone away to start eating meat again or scolding people for--well, practically anything nowadays. But something set me off the other day and I finally realized why.

A poster on a forum asked how he could cheaply obtain several hundred rose starts to make a giant rose garden out of an uncultivated piece of ground at his house. I love roses, I've grown a lot of them, and know what's required to grow them. I asked several questions about cost and maintenance of such a project and pointed out potential pitfalls, all of which he waved away, even though he mentioned he was on a budget.

For anyone under the delusion that gardening is a dainty hobby, a garden this size typically has a crew and a professional horticulturist to plant and take care of it. Annual pruning alone would take one person two solid weeks of stoop labor. And since rose gardens went out of style with bridge games and Tupperware parties, such an artifact would make his house harder to sell. Worse, the idea for a bed of fussy hybrid teas tends to appeal to people who remember the 50s--in other words, someone who'll be unable to take care of a large, fussy garden either now or in the near future, the view from the neighbor's houses and the person who has to remove a weedy briar patch be damned. And that's assuming rose rosette virus, a devastating, easily spread rose disease, doesn't find its way in.

I wasn't one of this person's neighbors, nor someone who'd have to clean up the ensuing hellscape. So why did this bother me so much? A mental checklist helped sort it out.

Older person: check.
Collection of random, cheap, easily available stuff: check.
Minimal maintenance planned: check.
Eyesore in the making: check.
Lowered property value: check.
A huge mess someone else will have to clean up: what I went through with my parents' hoarding.

I finally realized that this was just a plan for a plant hoard.

I can see the future. From Dreamstime.

My parents' house was on a large lot and they eventually got to the point that they couldn't take care of it--or the house or eventually themselves. And yet they refused to move. With good intentions, I helped with the yard. I spent hours pruning some overgrown roses and bagging up dead canes, a project that will leave you hot, sweaty and looking like you tried to bathe a cat. I know well what rose gardens look like with minimal care. Helping them with everything they needed wore me out and took up most of my time. I wouldn't do it again.

The whole attitude of hoarding is narcissistic. It's their stuff strewn everywhere, no matter how it looks or how much it burdens other people. And now the trend is crybullying.

If I see an article about a man making a stink because the city is threatening to bulldoze his rose garden, I'll know the back story and I won't be surprised.

Comments

Winning! Read some good news!

The good news keeps on coming. After four years of the country being in the biggest mess that most of us have lived through, it feels like spring is here early. The cold wind is refreshing, the snow is sparkling, and the days are getting longer. Photo from Pixabay . If you're getting this post by email, click here to see embedded videos from X. Trump bans the chemical and surgical mutilation of children in the name of "gender affirming care." This is just an executive order, which the next president could overturn; we need Congress to pass a law. The CIA admits COVID was mostly likely a lab leak after all. "The CIA analysis supporting lab origin of COVID was completed and published internally during the Biden administration. It was withheld from the public by the Biden Administration in violation of the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, which mandated release," said Richard H. Ebright on X. The CIA now says lab leak is the most likely explanation for COVID-19. R...

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too. Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...

Let's Grow Vegetables from Seed

MAHA may be a great idea, but what you do at your house is more important for your health than what's happening at the White House. Growing your own vegetables provides food that's fresher and tastes better than store-bought and helps you get some fresh air, sunshine and exercise. If you grow enough, you can even can your own sauces and soups that don't have any franken-food ingredients. My first time growing celery from seed. Here in central Indiana, it's time to plant celery from seed since the average last frost date is 10 weeks away. In a few weeks, it'll be time to plant tomatoes. There are a couple of ways to figure out when to start various seeds where you live: You can find out when it's time to plant things by 1) looking up your average last frost date, 2) getting a seed packet and looking at the instructions for starting the seeds indoors, and 3) counting backwards on a calendar by the number of weeks indicated. You could also ask Grok (X's AI fea...

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...

This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog