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

We drove from NYC to Iowa, staying with friends along the way (which was part of the reason for the drive) when our daughter was about that age. It turned out to be fun, but we only drive about 8 hours a day--NAPTIME!. Here's how we handled the kid in the car seat. Get up, eat breakfast, gas up car, let kid run around and play while all these things are being done, EVERYBODY GO POTTY BEFORE YOU GET IN THE CAR. Get in the car, strap her in, she's in a good mood, talk, sing, point out stuff outside the window, she draws or colors, sometimes mommy got in the back to read story books, or tilted the seat way back (not the safest, though). Then, eventually, she falls asleep for a morning nap. Drive as far as possible--NO STOPS! (she wakes up at stops; hence the urgent need for the grownups to go potty, just in case, even if they don't think they need to or just went before lunch--go again now, you CANNOT STOP once the kid is asleep) Since she's lulled by the car, her morning nap is longer than usual. When she wakes, begin the search for food. (and a bathroom; we also did this right after she'd been potty trained; we used pull-ups for the trip in case, but had to get her to the bathroom if at all possible) Eat lunch, find some sort of playground (fast-food play area, or occasionally a city park) and let her run around for an hour. EVERYBODY GO POTTY BEFORE YOU GET BACK IN THE CAR! Back in the car, more talking and pointing out the window, etc. She gets lulled to sleep again for a long afternoon nap. When she wakes, find a bathroom and supper, then drive to the town we're staying in. It worked out pretty well in terms of distance, we usually arrived there right at dinner time. Playtime in the evening, and a sort of late bedtime because of all the extra-long naps in the car. The really long part of the trip was NYC to Clarion, PA (here we had to stay in a hotel). Then to South Bend, IN. Then over to Peoria, IL, then to the center of Iowa (the shortest hop of all). That'll give you an idea of how many miles you could hope to cover with a pleasant schedule. We stayed in very inexpensive hotels (Super 8, Day's Inn, Motel 6--it only has to be clean and safe, not w/ a pool or anything, and we brought our own playpen bcs the cribs were not very good, but it was cheap), We played in the hallways, alcoves, and outdoor walkways of the hotels (at 18months, everything is fun!) had great fun looking out the windows (I hate the new fences along the interstates in populated areas; I understand them, but boy they're boring!).

A large rubber mat to catch fallen food, snacks, drinks. Only half kidding. I drove our 20 mo old twins roundtrip to NC twice last summer. I can not say it was the most enjoyable trip ever and since I was the only adult, even bathroom breaks for me were difficult but the majority of the trips were overall good. Worst was sitting for over 3 hrs in traffic. We went a whopping 1.2 miles in those 3 hours of which the twins screamed most of the time. I had a cooler that I could reach with pre-filled sippy cups, additional bottles of water, juice to refill when we stopped. I also had made little cloth bags for cheerios and crackers and that sort of snack. I can't trust them with plastic bags but the cloth bags worked out well. I made sure the sippy cups fit into their car seat cup holders and bought extras of that type. We do not usually eat fast food but for the trip, I stopped at fast food places that had a place for them to run around a little and stretch their legs. Take toys but watch for how big or hard it is for holding in the carseat. Also, larger, hard toys hurt if they are thrown and hit you. Expect some protests at some point. Our one twin doesn't use a pacie but I took extras and she did use it for a few minutes before falling asleep in her seat. I left at 0 dark early first trip and I thought the kids would go back to sleep but they really didn't. Next trip I left after rush hour traffic and that was better except for the traffic jam. The trips home we left after 6 pm. That was actually the best time for the twins because we ate dinner, then left and by 8 pm they were asleep in their seats. We have traveled as far away as 34 hours with babies, toddlers, kids. Have your plan but also be flexible as to when you stop and where.