Plant Addict Comes Clean

Hello,

My name is Kathy Jacoby and I am a Plant Addict. Yes, it’s true, I have an obsessive compulsion to purchase and grow as many plants as I can get my hands on. I also can’t seem to remove my hands from potting soil and compost. My backyard is filled with starts of the next ‘big thing‘. My garage is filled with things like organic fertilizers, vermiculite, pumice, peat moss and tools. Oh, wait, did I mention that I hoard gardening magazines, books and catalogs?  And, don’t even get me started on glazed pottery and garden art.

This obsession didn’t just happen overnight. It’s been building for a good couple of decades now. It started innocently enough with a new marriage, a new home and a Sunset Garden Guide given to me by my mother. (Who, by the way, is a Plant Addict herself.) That was back in my mid-twenties. Then by my early thirties it escalated to me leaving my work in the banking industry to going back to school in Horticulture. After the degree came landscape work. Then came my first job in a retail garden center, then my first job in a wholesale growing greenhouse, then owning my first wholesale nursery and then, gasp, owning my first retail garden center and farm store. Maybe we’ll talk more on those things later.

My husband and I are in California temporarily while he helps dig some hole in the ground near Oakland. (He’s a Tunnel Engineering Inspector working on the Fourth Bore of the Caldecott) His original contract was for three years but we’re hoping they will put him on another assignment in the Bay Area for at least a few more years when this tunnel is done. Because (don’t tell my family in Oregon) but we kinda like it down here. I mean, this weather, do you even know how wonderful you have it? Yes, everyone has been telling me that the last two winters have been unseasonably dry for here, but I can’t help but think of all the dreary, drizzly and dark days in Portland from November thru April. I’m telling you, I’m a born-and-raised Oregonian, and there are a lot of those days. I mean A LOT!

You can’t even think about putting things in the ground until May, either it’s too wet or a late freeze is looming. Here, in Pinole, I’ve been growing lettuce all winter. And I started working the new beds in late February.

So, there you have it. I’m a plant addict, looking not for rehabilitation but for co-dependents. People who understand and are willing to feed my ever-thirsty quest for green growth and dirty fingernails. Care to join me? As far as addictions go, it’s pretty fun!