Gardening Geek: Labor Day Edition

Coleus 'Crimson Gold'

You might be a gardening geek on Labor Day if...

You plan to spend this bonus day off in your garden and hope it doesn’t rain even though you need rain and desperately want it to rain.

You consider this weekend your drop dead date for ordering bulbs to plant this fall. Bonus points if you have already ordered bulbs but decided that because it is a three-day weekend, you should celebrate by ordering just a few more bulbs, just in case.

You lock up your reciprocating saw to keep from succumbing to the urge to do some pruning, because you know this is not the time to prune anything back. Bonus points if you have a reciprocating saw just for pruning.

Your Labor Day cook out menu includes tomatoes along with the last of the summer squash and maybe a melon or two, all from your garden.

You don’t mind that the rabbits ate the last of the green bean plants because it is late enough in the season that they really just made it easier for you to clean up the vegetable garden by eating up some of those plants.

You equate the failure of a garden hose with the end of the season and wonder why a garden hose doesn’t last all that long and can’t believe it didn’t even last all the way through its second year. Bonus points if the split in the hose made it look like “Old Faithful” had just erupted in your yard. (To be fair to all the garden hose manufacturers, the hose that burst was a cheap short hose used to connect the hose reel to the faucet. The hose on the reel has been going strong for about ten years.)

You stop thinking about what is still going to bloom in your garden and begin to reflect back on what did bloom in your garden and how you are going to make it even better next year. Bonus points if you still have some flowers that are yet to bloom before the first frost.

You realize that fall is for planting and look forward to planting more shrubs and other plants later this fall. Bonus points if you realize fall is actually a good time to mulch the garden, too. Double bonus points if you actually do mulch in the fall. Triple bonus points if you start working on a new planting bed or border on Labor Day.

You decide to clean up the garage in anticipation of bringing all the garden stuff inside in a month or so and have to get creative to fit everything in. Bonus points if you have two mowers in your garage. Double bonus points for three mowers, and a life-time of bonus points if you have four mowers in your garage, plus two electric chipper-shredders, a flat cart, a wheelbarrow, more than two shovels, more than three rakes and more than a dozen hoes. And give yourself more bonus points if you have more than five pairs of gardening gloves, and all the pairs are complete.

Finally, you might be a gardening geek on Labor Day if...

Your next big harvest is going to be a season’s worth of compost hiding in the bottom two-thirds of the compost bin.