COLUMN: It's a small (gardening) world

This past week while collecting a weed called dodder to show on our TV-Show “Making-it-Grow,” I was bitten by a dog. The dog bite was minor compared to this noxious, garden devouring, parasitic weed.
Dodder has no roots in the soil, no chlorophyll in its leaves, and no restraint once it starts to grow on your plants. This wiry, yellow weed produces structures that go into your plants to rob nutrients. Once it is established, the only way to banish it from your garden is to destroy it and the plants it is parasitizing.
The next day after being on “Making-it-Grow,” I finally made it to the doctor. A funny thing, both the nurse and the nurse practitioner that helped me were both Florence County Master Gardeners. In fact, I seem to run into Master Gardeners in all areas of my life. I am tickled to death when this happens because I think Gardening Folk (G-Folks) are the best. For example, recently the Florence County Master Gardeners and the Pee Dee Plant Professionals (a professional group of landscapers, nurserymen, and greenhouse growers) landscaped a crisis pregnancy home. It’s called “A Choice 2 M8K” and is located at 1216 W. Evans St. A special thanks to Taylor’s Garden & Gift Shop, Triple R Landscape Supply, and Long Acre Nursery for providing the many plants needed. Also, thanks to Southern States for providing soil admendments.
Many of your friends and co-workers may be G-Folks and the following is a few ways you might be able to recognize them:
- G-Folks spend more money on plants than on their clothes.
- G-Folks buy at least 10,000 plants in the course of a lifetime without having the vaguest notion of where they’ll put any one of them.
- G-Folks let their world come to a grinding halt whenever a total stranger asks to see their garden.
- G-Folks think that anyone who buys tomatoes from a supermarket in the summer should be committed.
- G-Folks are surrounded by neighbors who think they’re crazy. (But gardeners know the non-gardeners are really the crazy ones!)
- G-Folks know a garden is never perfect because there is always at least 30 more things that need to be done.
- G-Folks are like Thomas Jefferson, who, when he found out that his garden was too big to handle, tripled its size the following year.
- G-Folks go to public and private gardens with a notebook, so they can drive their families insane while they take a half day to write down the name of every intriguing plant they see.
- G-Folks are so cheap that they save seeds for at least 10 years, but are such spendthrifts that they shell out thousands over the course of a lifetime for garden gadgets.
- G-Folks, during their lifetime, kill 10,000 plants that would have survived perfectly well without any assistance.
- G-Folks know they’re going to live forever. Why else would a 90-year-old gardener plant two oak tree seedlings and then look through a catalog for a hammock?
- And finally, a G-Folk goes back to the garden the next day after he/she had gone to the doctor because of bug bites or maybe a dog bite.
Also, all these Gardening Folks make my job much easier. The Clemson University Cooperative Extension Service offers its programs to people of all ages, regardless of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, disability, political belief, sexual orientation, marital or family status and is an equal opportunity employer.