Are little trees all you think about?

You may have an obsession with bonsai if…

• ·         The Wedgewood china willed to your wife by her great grandmother is in cardboard boxes in the basement, because the china cabinet in the dining room is filled with bonsai pots.
• ·         Your front yard is always the last to be mowed and has more dandelions than any other house on the block because you refuse to spend time and money spraying it “it’s just grass”.
• ·          You plan vacation routes and timing based on bonsai events,  nurseries and seasonal sales. You’re really obsessed if you refuse to take vacations because you can’t get a reliable plant sitter.
• ·         You keep a shovel, soil and plastic bags in your trunk, and family members cringe when you drive past a construction site or landscape job, since they know you are likely to stop and poke around.
• ·         You have stopped to investigate seedlings in a highway median, ramp turn off or ‘devil strip’-bonus points if a uniformed officer has asked you firmly to move along, its public property and unsafe.
• ·         You told your kids there was no room in the back yard for a swing set, dog run or play house, but you managed to work in a new grow bed this year.
• ·         Your family, friends and neighbors are tired of being reminded to save such useful items as kitty litter buckets, margarine tubs and coffee cans.
• ·         When you walk the dog, you find yourself having to make awkward decisions: use the plastic bag to take home the moss and/or accent plant you found, or dump it out and clean up after the dog.
• ·         You have offered to help a neighbor redo their landscaping simply to get your hands on the plants that get pulled out.  Bonus points if you initiated the redo, bonus bonus points if you approached a total stranger for the same purpose.
• ·         You have bought exotic fruit with no real intention of eating it, and patronized ethnic markets simply to collect new seeds to sprout.
• ·         At every Asian restaurant you ask for chopsticks-even if only ordering soup.
• ·         Any trip to the hardware store, home improvement center or retail establishment of any kind has the secondary goal of “Which items or merchandise sold here, though not meant for a horticultural purpose, can be used for bonsai in someway?”
• ·         You bought tickets when the community theatre announced a musical comedy about tiny sized bonsai trees, and were disappointed to sit through nearly three hours of singing and dancing about an eccentric old maiden aunt, with not a ‘little bean’ in sight.