Skip to main content

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. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

COVID Test Result is In

I don't have COVID.  On the one hand, it would have been a relief to have finally caught COVID and gotten natural antibodies, especially from having a mild case of it. On the other hand, I was concerned about my dog catching it from me (he's healthy, but nine years old) and it might have interfered with Thanksgiving plans.  Until I'm well, I'll stay home.
2 comments
Read more

HHS Doctor on Hidden Camera: "The Vaccine is Full of Sh!t"

Jodi O'Malley, a registered nurse at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center (part of the Department of Health and Human Services), teamed up with Project Veritas to expose severe COVID vaccine reactions occurring but not being reported to VAERS, the vaccine adverse event reporting system, even though medical professionals are legally required to report such injuries. During the filming, a man in his thirties with congestive heart failure was being treated; the doctor believed the cause was his COVID vaccination. O'Malley says she's seen dozens of adverse reactions. "The vaccine is full of shit" and the government wants to "sweep it under the mat," the doctor says on hidden camera. We finally know what's in the vaccine. Screen grab from Project Veritas video . The video also shows a pharmacist stating that off-label medications such as ivermectin were forbidden to be prescribed on pain of termination.  Project Veritas is a nonprofit organization that does ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gaining Strength, But...

I had a pleasant surprise when I got out the sawzall today to finish repairs on the front door. Not the way it cut the new door sweep--I probably should have used the jigsaw. It was how easy it was to put the blade in. You have to turn a part on the saw, which I could barely do two months ago when I had nails to cut off . Today--probably thanks to spending my spare time since August working saws, sanders and paintbrushes--it was no harder than turning a knob on the stove.  So I've built up some strength in my hands and probably elsewhere, but my adrenals aren't keeping up with cortisol production. After a day's work (well, three or four hours, to be honest), my neck, back, jaws, and sinuses all hurt and they don't feel better until use a dab of hydrocortisone. Other pain relievers don't help much. This isn't normal muscle stiffness--the kind you get from working out--it feels like I'm inflamed. Last weekend in particular, after a flu shot and a few days of p...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Under-the-Radar Ointment for Hard-to-Heal Wounds

Imagine looking in the mirror one morning and finding the side of your head black and your ear twice its normal size. That's what happened to Brad Burnam, who caught a deadly superbug at the hospital where he worked. Sometime after having emergency surgery--one of 21 surgeries over the next five years--he set out to cure himself.  The result he created was a fusion of PHMB, an antibiotic common in Europe but little known in the US, in a petroleum jelly base (like Vaseline), held together with a stabilizer/emulsifier. It sticks to wounds, keeps them moist, and provides a barrier. It cured his antibiotic resistant superbug. After getting FDA clearance, he formed Turn Therapeutics, and Hexagen is now available by prescription.  Screen shot from https://turntherapeutics.com/about/ Millions of Americans suffer from open wounds--chronic issues like diabetic foot ulcers. Readers probably have their blood sugar under control and avoid this condition, but might have parents, partners o...
Post a Comment
Read more

1972: Carole King, M*A*S*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and...
21 comments
Read more