Obsession

Gardening has become an obsession.  All I want to do is think about, read about, and work on and in my garden.  There are a ton of sites out there on the web about gardening and now the adult school catalogs are coming out and courses on gardening are available for sign up.  I don’t know whether this particular plethora of information was available in the amount is is now, but more than likely I am aware of it because I am paying attention to it.

According to the National Gardening Association (NGA), an estimated record 91 million households participated in one or more types of DIY indoor and outdoor lawn and garden activities in 2005. In 2006, homeowners spent a record $44.7 billion to hire professional lawn and landscape services. Taken together, these figures represent a dramatic increase in gardening interest and expenditures.

So what does this mean?  To me it means that more and more people are becoming aware and concerned about how their property looks or beginning to take a positive role in their surrounding environment.  Even our First Lady has a very large working vegetable garden that provides much of the food the White House eats.  Many of the people, according to the same article, are young and involved in the hobby which includes vegetable gardening as well as organic tending to the property plantings. 

I take that as a good thing.  As more people become aware of the fragility of the environment in which we live and the need to be more responsible with it, the more care they will take of it.  I hope that means there will be a trend toward healing the Earth and doing things in a way that conserves natural resources rather than just uses them up.  Does it help in my obsession?  No but it does provide a welcome community for me to join.