"The dog takes a machete with him when he goes out to pee".

O.M.G! That is the funniest thing I've read today, thanks for the laugh!

LOL

I think the statement I always hear of "where do you find the time?" politely translates into "clearly you don't have enough time" ;)

You know you have too much garden when you spend more on fertilizer than you do on food!

You know you have too much garden when the bees say "We surrender!!"

Carol

You know you have too much garden when your husband thinks he has to eat EVERY day. OMG, I just fed him yesterday!!!

Oh, that's a good one!

. . .supper burns when I run out to smell a few flowers.

Pelican, mine, too!! That's too funny! You need to train yours to just go get subs when he sees you in the garden around suppertime.

When people stop in and ask if you are selling the roses...only happened twice so far this week.

Pelicanhead and kitcatclub --
My DH has a none-too-subtle way of ending my gardening activities in the early evening: He gets out the hose and starts watering. It's not very much fun gardening in an area that's just been watered.

Kay

It's been a while since I heard, "OMG! There's a HOUSE in there!" Kim

You know you have a big garden when you start using binoculars to check for Blackpot...

Don't water at night, just asking for problems..

Also you know your garden is too big when you have to haul a full chord of wood through (~100 feet) it because you planted where the wood was supposed to go.

Kitcatclub, I need to send him in and have him reprogrammed!

Oh, Kay - that's just mean! And devious! You can't even yell at him because he's "being helpful".

Hubby came up with a new one last night - you have too much garden when you need a GPS to find the compost pile!

Here is a link that might be useful: The Stubborn Gardener

You have too much garden when your cell phone reception from the garden doesn't reach the home phone.

You guys have to keep this one going - it's a HOOT!

You also have too much garden when the water pressure drops to a trickle from the hose bib to the outer beds.

A dear friend who has since passed, knew his ten acre garden was too big when he woke up one Sunday morning to find a very large Latino group using his front steps to hold a wedding! He was a heavy sleeper and it was the band on the front lawn tuning up that woke him. He said he took care of that one with the sprinklers! LOL! Kim

OMG Kim that is hilarious!!

You know your garden is too big when: your old dogs stop following you around everywhere and you have to 'pick them up" on the way back to the house... I have 3 senior Doxies and it never fails that I find them sleeping under different plants on my way in... One day, My 3yr grandson, started screaming --Look gran, there's a coyote under your bush... a d smiled very big--it was one of the Doxies...

How many times have you been asked if you sell the roses? Both flowers and plants were the questions. My old Newhall garden was on an unused hillside in a planned community. There were about twelve hundred roses plus perennials, some fruit trees, berries and lots of weeds. Anything that struck my fancy came home to see how it would do on that hillside.

The homeowners frequently not only helped themselves to flowers and fruit but were also known to remove plants to their gardens as, no matter how often it was printed in the community newsletter, they believed this was the "holding area" for things available for their gardens. For many years, it was a joy, but later became a real chore. THAT'S when you know you have too much garden! Kim

Kim - did I read that right. You had Twelve Hundred (1200) roses?!

You know your garden is too big when you have to follow the exit signs to get out of it!

Yes ma'am. From 1989 through 2006-7, it swelled from the three hundred I moved from Granada Hills to Newhall to that number. The vast majority I propagated. There were many seedlings which never appeared on any list, both mine and those which arrived from fellow pollen pimps. It was an amazing sight in bloom and taught me many neat things. I was blessed to have been able to study many really "exotic" roses and loved every minute of that. Irrigation problems, fighting vermin and thieves and dwindling energy and other resources made the necessity of dismantling it due to construction less devastating than it otherwise would have been. I maintained several hundred I "couldn't live without" and now find there are many of those I CAN live without.

I recreated the inventory of what passed through that canyon through the years at the link below from old lists, receipts, etc. It WAS fun! Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: A Hidden Sanctuary

Wow - that must have been a wild and incredible journey. Outrageously impressive. I cannot imagine how you could have cared for that many roses?

I will never be able to think of this thread...
Without the number of 1200 in my head.

In those years, water was cheap and abundant. There were virtually no diseases and with that virgin soil, horse manure mulch with overhead, oscillating sprinklers were usually all that was needed. I never sprayed. It was too huge, too many plants, always windy and I feared finding a dead road runner on the path. Something I wouldn't have been able to live with. Quail were everywhere, vultures, hawks, bush tits, all manner of wildlife.

I often went to work leaving an overhead sprinkler on with instructions to the gardening foreman to turn it off when they left at 4 PM. The roses loved it! I got all the manure I wanted from several sources and labor was available very affordably through the Community Services Center in town.

"Caring" for them didn't become a real issue until I began pollinating heavily, then I'd rather don my 'bee suit' and spend the days off collecting and spreading pollen than anything else. Without diseases and insects requiring spraying, it's amazing how easy roses are to grow...even overly large quantities of them. Kim

I knew that I had too much garden when visitors began consistently asking me if I take care of the garden all by myself. The answer is a modified YES ... the roses are my responsibility and the rest of the place is a shared effort between The Husband and me.

None of the above apply. I guess I haven't maxed out yet.

You know your garden is too big when your SPF expires and you have to re-apply before you get to the end of it.

Great stories, Kim. You've made some great contributions to the rose world. I have perused that rose list on HMF before (all 64 pages!) and I would have loved to have seen that garden!

SPF, that's great! Thanks, Seil. Much appreciated. Some of the older photos on my current page on HMF show some of the old garden. Unfortunately, I see a number of them are no longer on the site. This is one of my favorites.

http://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=21.45877

There are a few others which are still there. Perhaps going back ward from the link above will show some? The link below is what happened to it. Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: construction begins.....

You have too much garden when the IRS lets you claim it as a dependent

Ahh, ha, ha, ha!!! That's a a really good one, Karen!

So glad you started this thread, Kit Cat Club!! :D

I'm currently trying to decide whether or not to start making my rose garden less work. I'm getting too old and out of shape to handle it anymore, and I get NO help from my husband or the boys. You guys think Kim had a lot of roses... according to HMF, my list is at 1756 right now, and that doesn't include duplicates, unknowns and roses still not in their database... plus all the little baby OP seedlings I'm playing with (50-60). I used to say the roses were my "therapy" from life and all my so-called problems. Now I need therapy to help me deal with the overwhelming job of taking care of all these roses. Not to mention the perennials and irises and Japanese maples....

We've got 1/3 acre on a corner lot, and when we moved here 11yrs ago, I only had about 800 roses to move from the mobile home park. My poor sister-in-law helped my husband move most of the roses while I moved other stuff, and she claims she ended up with carpal tunnel from handling all those pots! I had those potted roses all over the yard for several yrs waiting to be planted (and constantly being added to). I frequently got the passers-by asking if I sold them. Thankfully no one has ever stolen any plants or even cut the blooms! But the deer think I have a smorgasbord!

I was thinking the other day, I should start digging up my "least favorite" ones and pot them up to sell them. But then I think, "that's too much work!"

A virtual forest of roses, Kim! What a shame that it all got bulldozed!

Beth, we all know your addiction! And I know how hard it is to part with any of them, even the ones you don't like. I'm the worlds worst shovel pruner. You know that Cl. Peace I've had for 6 years and still has NEVER bloomed? Yep, it's still green and growing and in the ground. I did just buy a new Candy Land to replace it though so maybe I'll actually dig it up this time!

Beth - I live in the heart of one of California's biggest fruit growing communities. We all laughed many years ago when many of the growers suddenly went from stands with already picked fruit to "You Pick" stands. We thought it hysterical that city folk would want to come out to pay for fruit they had to pick - but indeed it's big business. People drive up to 100+ miles to come out here and spend a day picking their own fruit, and pay good money to do so.

My point - how about "You Pick/Dig Out" roses?!

Beth, I don't envy you! I fully know your feeling. Initially, when the construction was finally a 'go', the feeling was one of frantic. What on earth was I going to do with them and how would I be able to save them from the bull dozers? I gave away hundreds, many hundreds. I dumped nearly as many and far too many had to be tractored out of the ground and into the landfill. But, once the shock was past, the relief was nearly overwhelming. Like being released from a sacred vow which had become far too much work, time and effort to afford any real enjoyment.

Now, there are fewer than a quarter of that number, including seedlings. I've nearly completed planting (yup, much to closely, densely packed!) the convenient level area of the rear hill and find myself with MANY which aren't going to have any level space to occupy. I'm praying I can find them local homes, quickly!

There is still room on the hill as it's nearly three quarters of an acre, but it's vertical and like walking up a sand dune. Like you, I'm feeling much too old and out of shape to commit myself to schlepping up and down that slope to maintain them. Far better to let them go to someone who will love them than to resent them until either lack of water, sun scald or vermin take them out.

Harmony, your idea of "You dig, you pick" has been tried. It doesn't work. I put out that call when I had to begin dismantling the place. ZERO responses. There have been several calls like that put out in the past years locally of people who wanted their roses removed to good homes. No one responded. Most would take them IF YOU dig, deliver and plant them, but if it requires effort, it ain't happening. Perhaps, if they were "staples" like Double Delight, Mr. Lincoln or some other home improvement store fodder, the results may have been different, but these were OGRs, modern shrubs, imports, more resembling EuroDesert offerings than Lowe's sidewalk sale. No one showed interest. Just the way of the world, unfortunately. Much different than it was when I "rescued" things several decades ago. Kim

"A garden is an anchor which, depending on your point of view, can be either a support or a teather."
Nancy Arnold Goldstein

Wow - this thread went crazy over the weekend! You guys came up with some good ones! My husband came up with another one over the weekend - you know you have too much garden when you get to the end of your weeding and the weeds are 2 feet tall back where you started.

Kim and Beth, at my best, I had maybe 300 roses - I can't imagine taking care of over a thousand. I think I have maybe 150 now and they get minimal care. I completely understand the need to cut back - I hurt my back a few years ago and it's never been quite right since. I wrote about it on my blog, if you're interested. I really love the roses I have left - I'm down to the bomb-proof ones and a few that I just don't have the heart to get rid of.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Stubborn Gardener

Kitcatclub, YOU have probably the perfect rose garden. Filled with the 'bomb-proof' and those who have stolen your heart. A manageable number, all of which speak to you, either through their joy in just being with you, or something special none other can share with you. Congratulations! I'm sorry it came at the price of a back injury, but otherwise, your garden is to be envied! Kim

Thanks, Kim - I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right. It may not be perfect, but it is perfect for me! Fortunately, the back injury is managable - I just have to slow down a little (well, a lot) and I'm discovering new things in the garden I hadn't noticed before. You'd be amazed at all the cool bugs (yes, bugs) that populate the garden if you just stop and watch for a while.

We've been inundated with baby toads, no bigger than your thumbnail, little preying mantises (mantisi?), and tons of different butterflies. I'm convinced they like the weeds which are taking over - I sort of fell bad pulling them up! LOL! And the lightning bugs! We've NEVER had so many.

It's also given me time to write which I never felt I had time for before. Now, when an idea hits me, I drop my tools, plunk down in a chair and scribble it down. It's usually time for a break anyway.

Anyway, sorry to babble at you! Thanks for the good wishes!

KCC

Here is a link that might be useful: The Stubborn Gardener