Wow, some sowers are finished? Such eager beavers on the forum! :) I have been preparing for WSing for a couple of weeks, updating the spreadsheet, sorting through seeds, and figuring out my "starting line-up" (love that Nan). This includes, best as I can determine, seeds that need a long cold stratification period. Yesterday, I started soaking 2 types of seeds - Ceanothus americanus (New Jersey Tea - a small native shrub) and Passiflora incarnata (Passion vine). These have a tough seed coat which require soaking and/or scarification with a fairly long stratification period. Pretty sure I'll be sowing the first containers today! Yippee!

lol Yeah, Denise. I think that is how it is. She wasn't trying to criticize. She wanted me to give her some insight into what it is like to do our hobby, what kinds of people are attracted to it, and what makes it rewarding. I mean, I would be thinking the same thing if I were in her shoes. I was thinking the same thing at one point! That wire shelving doesn't match the aesthetic of hardwood floors and period molding and I would never use them. Ha…! Anyway, these are the points I made. Let me know if you agree/disagree. Point 1: Expertise gives you different vision When I look at a chessboard, I see this: blahblahblahblah. Sure, I know the rules of chess and could technically play (aka lose) a game. But when expert chess players look at mid-game chessboards, they see patterns. They see the strategies of the players and how the board will look many moves into the future. In the same way, when my sister looks at my plants, she sees a wall of green leaves and vines, which look pretty much the same as each other. She sees this: blahblahblahblah. When we look at our plants, our eyes are able to make much more sense out of the picture. We see them as individuals even when they are massed together, because our eyes are much more experienced with this task. We get a lot more information out of the image, so it is not abstract or boring. This is especially true when looking at our own collections. Point 2: Working with our plants releases endorphins If you have 3-5 plants in your house then watering them takes about 5 minutes. Maybe you feel a little insecure about your ability to keep your plants alive, so when you walk over to them, it's with a sense of trepidation and humility. Comparing this type of plant interaction with the time we spend with our plants is like comparing walking to the parking garage with going on a 10 mile run. Our brains release endorphins while we work with our plants, so our brains start to drool endorphins just from looking at our plants... in anticipation of the calming activity they represent. As someone who has a much higher than average baseline anxiety level, I know that, even if I have neglected my plants and there's going to be hell to pay, once I start working on them my brain will shut off and I will feel no anxiety until I'm done. It's like taking drugs. Point 3: Different collectors have different things they get out of it A serious grower could absolutely have the goal of using their sophisticated knowledge of plants to beautify their property. But they could just as easily have a different goal, such as learning more about the genus of plants, its members, their adaptations and variations, their potential medical applications, etc, etc etc. Or their goal could be to set themselves high challenge bars, and attempt to crack the code and bloom a species of which there are very few photographs, or grow a prize-winning plant for a show. Or their goal could be to socialize with other growers, swap plants, and make friends. Saying someone has failed to meet an aesthetic ideal with their grow room is making some pretty rash assumptions about what interests and motivates them. Point 4: What is good for us is not always good for the plants One of the biggest shifts that occurs, when a person gets serious about this hobby, is that they start to put the plant's preferences before some of their own. Sometimes you can reach an equilibrium in which the plant habitat looks beautiful to everyone (and not just other collectors), but often, what looks "pretty" (I'm looking at you, girl with African Violet sitting in the middle of her coffee table) is a much less happy environment for the plant. So, when my sister looks at my setup through her eyes and sees "ugly," I'm looking through the plant's eyes and seeing "comfy cozy!" Frankly, most "aesthetic" plant setups look like torture camps to my eyes, and there's nothing pretty about that. Point 5: Aesthetics… This is the bit that you two both jumped right on. Some people would kill to live in a modern SoHo loft and others would give their eye teeth for a rustic Montana ranch. I know my plant setup isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I have gone to great pains to make it aesthetic in its own way. Kind of in a science lab or professional greenhouse kind of way, but hey, that is still pleasant. When I'm finished moving, my plants are going to have a room to themselves, one which happens to have some of the best views in the house. I can tell my sister and mom are a bit taken aback that I would give the best room to the plants, but to me it just makes sense. Aside from the logic of good South and East exposures, it is one of the rooms I will be spending the most time in. So, while it will look like a very bright storage room to them, it will be the heart of the house to me, and a very beautiful space indeed. But, I suppose if I can keep asking her what she sees in her fiancé, she has a right to ask me what I see in my plants. ;) ====================== And now my responses to your remarks above… Denise, I am very much in the camp of believing that when someone gets extreme about an aspect of their life, it must be serving a function of some kind. That doesn't mean they are broken and need to stop. We ALL self-regulate. It's just that some methods are untraditional and eye-catching and others blend right in and camouflage the root problem/feelings the person is trying to work out. (e.g. A businessman working 80 hour weeks; a housewife going Martha Stewart crazy; a college student binge drinking… are all pretty invisible to our eyes. But buy 100 indoor plants and eyebrows definitely get raised.) Many years back I got really into MMORPGs and played one quite obsessively. (translation: big online game you play with other people.) To truly be a part of that community, you have to log an embarrassing quantity of hours every day; it basically becomes a second job. I can certainly say that the other people I met during that time of my life were all wrestling with something or another. Today, the only ones of us that are still playing that game or similar ones had very very serious underpinning reasons for living their life in limbo. Everyone else eventually balanced themselves out and started using their free time more productively. As I've told people before, I got into Hoyas on the back of a really bad breakup with a partner of 8+ years. There's no way I would have collected this many Hoyas if I started today. But it's a part of my lifestyle and identity now. So, it's not like, just because I'm in a better place, I'm going to chuck out all the plants. (lol) Of course, most people here don't have collections as disproportionate as mine, so I am not speaking about you guys at all. But my collection most certainly bloomed from a time in my life when I needed some serious anxiety management tools. That said, it's pretty arrogant to make assumptions about what other people's reasons for their excesses are. We don't all want the same things out of life. So, what you perceive as a 'lack' in someone's life, might not be driving them at all. All you really know is that they've found something that works for them, and if you have the desire to judge them for their choice, then you've got your own issues to work out. This post was edited by greedyghost on Thu, Oct 2, 14 at 14:26

I live in Watertown, and would love a plant swap close to home. I plan to attend the one in Lafayette, but two would be twice as nice. I have many many winter sewn perenials, a bunch of datura seedlings ready to be repotted, and a huge stash of hydrangia plants that I salvaged from my local Lowe's trash. they where in great shape, just needed a drink. People thought I was crazy, I was stuffing them into ever nook and cranny in my car.But""""", now my house is full. Does anyone have some trailing violets??? I used to have some wonderful ones, they where distroyed and I have had little luck finding more. I will watch for post on an Oswego/Fulton swap. I have tons of half full packages of wonderful seeds if anyone has any datura other then white to swap. Email for a complete list. I have spent well over $100.00 on new seeds this year. Oh, I also have a nice bunch of bitter sweet seedlings, They took for ever to get going, but are wonderful now.

Without a doubt, I'd take 2 cars. For a hundred reasons. It will be impossible to time stops convenient for all of you. In one car, you stop for the girls to use the bathroom, they will wake up a sleeping baby. In your own car, even if you pull over with them, you won't have as much noise. That goes for drive time as well. 4 and 5 year olds just don't sleep as much in the car as parents would like them to. They will play, sing, and fight, all of which will keep the baby from sleeping when you want him to. Like dogs in the neighborhood, one starts yelling, they all chime in! It's going to be hard, but that would not stop me if the trip were important to me. I think I'd try to get him using a sippy cup or bottle or sport bottle w/straw -something else he can drink from besides me (if you are breastfeeding). It will help "get him by" for a little while until you can stop. Mine would drink from a straw at 6 mos, they really pick it up quick. Travel as much during sleeping times as possible. Stash some interesting new toys to take out as needed, things he can explore for the first time. Expect to set next to him a lot, most of the time he is awake. Keep diapers and wipes in the side pocket of the door, or something, where you can get to them very quickly. Take some plastic bags to dispose of them. During big driving days, dress him in layers to help keep him as comfortable as possible in heat or air conditioning. If you don't have them, get shades for the windows. When we travel, the sun always seems to be in the wrong place for the baby to go to sleep or street or headlights wake them up just as they are almost asleep! Very frustrating, so shade them well. Keep an old blanket with you, so if you stop at a park or rest area (or any grassy spot) you can let him stretch. When we've travelled with our kids that young, nothing settled them down better than a chance to be on the back or tummy, change them in the fresh air to "air out" that tired bottom. And take a really big bottle of Excedrin -you'll probably need it LOL!