A couple to start....

-You know you're a hostaholic when you see a beautiful lawn with trees and think what a waste of a great hosta space.

-You know you're a hostaholic when you tell the family you're taking them out to eat someplace new and it just happens to have a Hosta Nursery nearby you've wanted to check out.

Let's hear yours.

Paul

people say 'Bigfoot is Real' and you say, "why yes, it is, I can see it out my back window..."

You know you're a hostaholic when you tear out all of your grass to have more room to plant more hostas.

You know you're a hostaholic when you start running out of room to plant more hostas so you begin thinking about planting hostas in your neighbors yards.

You know you're a hostaholic when you have shade cloth going all the way across the front of your house to protect your hostas from the sun.

you run out of room and start hanging hostas in pots ON walls and fences.
your first reaction when you pull in the drive and see a package full of hosta on the porch is like a kid in a candy store and your husband and children laugh at you!
you start to get upset about the hosta you just recieved being Olive Branch when you KNEW you bought Olive Bailey Langdon then you check and find out you really bought Olive Branch.
you start to think about getting rid of a pet because they stepped on a Hosta.

You promise your spouse that this is the LAST delivery of the summer!(as you see Fex-Ex driving up to the house)

When you are glad to split some of yours for a friend who says she doesn't care about the names, just wants the plants, and you fill out name planes anyway.

chris

you look at any unnamed hosta in your yard as an unwanted visitor.

you have gone out in the dark with a flashlight more than once to check something on a hosta.

ken

You Know you are Addicted to Gardening when . . .
Your neighbors recognize you in your pajamas, rubber clogs and a cup of coffee
You grab other people�s banana peels, coffee grinds, apple cores, etc. for your compost pile.
You have to wash your hair to get your fingernails clean.
All your neighbors come and ask you questions.
You know the temperature of your compost every day.
You buy a bigger truck so that you can haul more mulch.
You enjoy crushing Japanese beetles because you like the sound that it makes.
Your boss makes "taking care of the office plants" an official part of your job description.
Everything you touch turns to "fertilizer".
Your non-gardening spouse becomes conversant in botanical names
You find yourself feeling leaves, flowers and trunks of trees wherever you go, even at funerals
You dumpster-dive for discarded bulbs after commercial landscapers remove them to plant annuals
You plan vacation trips around the locations of botanical gardens, arboreta, historic gardens, etc.
You sneak home a 7 foot Japanese Maple and wonder if your spouse will notice
When considering your budget, plants are more important than groceries
You always carry a shovel, bottled water and a plastic bag in your trunk as emergency tools
You appreciate your Master Gardener badge more than your jewelry
You talk "dirt" at baseball practice.
You spend more time chopping your kitchen greens for the compost pile than for cooking
You like the smell of horse manure better than Estee Lauder
You rejoice in rain�even after 10 straight days of it.
You have pride in how bad your hands look.
You have a decorative compost container on your kitchen counter.
You can give away plants easily, but compost is another thing.
Soil test results actually mean something.
You understand what IPM means and are happy about it
You�d rather go to a nursery to shop than a clothes store.
You know that Sevin is not a number
You take every single person who enters your house on a "garden tour"
You look at your child�s sandbox and see a raised bed.
You ask for tools for Christmas, Mother/Father�s day, your Birthday and any other occasion you can think of.
You can�t bear to thin seedlings and throw them away.
You scold total strangers who don�t take care of their potted plants.
You know how many bags of fertilizer/potting soil,/mulch your car will hold.
You drive around the neighborhood hoping to score extra bags of leaves for your compost pile
Your preferred reading matter is seed catalogs
And last but not least:
You know that the four seasons are:
Planning the Garden
Preparing the Garden
Gardening
~and~
Preparing and Planning for the next Garden

-Author Unknown

Then some other forum members added even more, at the link.

When you hear an aquaintance, who happens to be selling hosta to someone, explaining that you have to divide them and her planting method and you just stand there and smile to yourself and think it is just not worth telling her the difference. She sells the same old ones every year.

Touring my garden with an old gardening friend (he is the go to guy for gardening around here) and I tell him this is Loyalist, Independence, Revolution, etc. and he hasn't a clue what I am talking about. He is in the regimental reenactment group and a Loyalist Decendent. But he was very excited to find that hosta seed themselves.

Betty

Steve

Or Outhouse Delight'

ken

you bring 50 pots of hostas into the house in February(again) to wake them up because you are going through hosta withdrawls and need a fix.

You know you're a hostaholic when:

you find yourself outside with a bucket of soapy water washing the Saskatoon berry spots off your hosta.

You find yourself in the rain with an umbrella, on the phone to your sister examining 'spots' on hosta leaves thinking its HVX and when sanity returns you realize it's dirt.

You point out HVX on garden tours and explain to owners what it is and why they should get rid of the plant.

You carry around information on HVX and hand it out freely at any nursery that has infected plants. You feel like the "hosta police"

You can never leave the house. Spring too much to do and so much promise. Early summer, the wonderful virginal hostas. Mid to late summer, it's hot and the water system might break. Fall there's clean up and winter protection to think of. Winter all those tempting catalogues and planing for the plants you have no room for and vowed not to buy.

You infect friends. One neighbor this fall was going to add a couple to the Hostas I'd shared with her this year. She bought 30 and can't wait for more.

You dream you get a haircut and it looks exactly like a hosta.

ken

and it was 1650 .. to be more exact ... lol ...

Denny

you break out in a cold sweat when someone mentions getting a slice of one of your plants!

You remember asking for a slice of someones hosta and not feeling guilty !
(note. I did babysit the house and mow for 3 weeks) :)

You walk the line of plants so often you feel like you are on guard duty.

You realize your Moms friends will ALWAYS have that 10-20 year head start !

...you set a hosta budget for the year....and know you have no intention of sticking to it.

Paul

...your husband begs you to remove all the spring hosta orders from the kitchen counters so he can cook dinner.

...people visit your home, step out the back door and say, "Wow, you are really into this."

...your garden club friends expect you to name all the unnamed hostas in their gardens.

...your husband doesn't want to drive with you anymore because he fears for his life when you're at the wheel and swivel to check out another hosta lover's garden.

you know you cant fit anymore hostas in your garden,then go and order 'Empress Wu'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...........#HELP ME#

Steve

"It happened to me"!

Les

These are hilarious! I can relate to more than a few of them!

Hosta budget? That's not actually a set amount is it? lol

Deanna

But I know I'm a hostaholic, because I had to up the size of PODS to move south, because I was putting HOSTA into the PODS.

And, I've been in zone denial ever since I returned to south Alabama. Then I had this terrible nightmare about the zone being CHANGED TO Z9A!!!! Dear hubby said I was screaming in my sleep about something.

And I'm considering ways to hang shade cloth over the hosta beds when it gets really hot this summer.

...as well as laying irrigation pipe so I won't cop out on adequately watering these thirsty babies....and hauling in two small dumptruck loads of soil so they will flourish. Never did that for any of my plants before.

And when I mention HOSTA to my friends at home, they all ask, "What is that?" And I begin to tell them but their eyes sort of glaze over.

-Beverly

Hmmmm, I think that has to be my current state of mind.
I truly enjoyed reading through this entire thread. Ah man, too many of them strike HOME.

Too true, too true.

And you are a hostaholic when it relaxes you to think of good hosta names.

You go all Macgyver and construct something really strange 22' down the side of your garage using an old dog kennel just to make more shade so you can plant more hosta.

You know your a hostaholic when...

Your neighbors no longer wonder what you are doing. They all know.

1) You're the first customer to call the irrigation system dudes every spring to get your system turned on.

2) You worry more about HVX than AIDS, SARS, H1N1 and Ebola combined.

3) Your have to alert your credit card company in advance of making a large online hosta purchase to avoid triggering the "Fraud Protection Department" verification phone calls.

4) The thought of going on your much-anticipated 10th anniversary trip this summer suddenly has you worried because you realize the 30 new hostas you just ordered will be home all alone that week.

You go out in a driving rain and hail storm to cover your hosta so they won't get holes in them.

Just got my order from Chris (Hallson's). I think they are the most amazing ones I have received-they are huge eyes and the roots...wowohwow. Awaiting my orders from Jim's and from Rob (Lakeside). You know you are a hostaholic when you arrive home from getting a haircut, so your hair looks decent for the first time in months and you still stick on a baseball cap and head out to dig hole for the new arrivals! Happy, happy.

Despite comments from your neighbors and Social Services about how thin your children have become, you continue to steal their lunch money to pay for one more Hallson's order.

At a job interview you are asked which great American you admire the most and you reply "Ken Adrian".

harryshoe -- love your additions to the list

bernd -- do you have OTHER favourite hosta sites? (Actually perhaps I'm better off not knowing!)
Jan

bkay

Gesila -- looks like you will be EATING OUT until you can have your kitchen back!
Jan

And you're always optimistic, next yer there won't be a drought and all the groundhogs will go over the rainbow bridge and there won't be any cutworms.......

Where's my shovel, I need to dig a new bed!

Sandy

ken

She's one of the ones who pestered GardenWeb until they added this forum.

She's the one who buys new ones when there's no new beds to plant them in.

She's the one who ran 'Michigan Hosta Mania' to meet more like her.

She's the one who converted an entire room in the basement to shelves with lights for winter seedlings.

She's the one who had me extend the electric fence to provide more room for seedlings out in the forest.

She's the one with all the sticky-notes throughout the pages of the Hosta books (at least I have an idea for Birthday and Anniversary gifts).

She's the one who registered 12 Hosta.

She's the one willing to go out in the dark with a flashlight and soapy water jar to slug-pick.

She's the one with pictures of almost every Hosta here, for every year it's been here.

She's the one who will have visitors bring leaves of NOIDS to try to help I.D.

She's the one who will tell visitors what bed 'so-and-so' Hosta is in without having to refer to my database.

She's the one who specifies what rock goes where in the border of a bed.

She's the one who adds 'pick up curbside bagged leaves' to my honeydew list every fall.

She's the one with every copy of the AHS Journal since she started this.

She's the one who demands that all the pathways are freshly raked each Spring so visitors won't miss them and step in the beds.

She's the one with the big stack of folded boxes to cover spring frost endangered Hostas.

She's the one who had me teach her how to use our GPS to measure the total garden area.

She's the one who directs me which branches to limb, which trees to remove for beds without enough light.

Did I mention that SHE is the hostaholic?

Now I'm going to be thinking of a bunch more reasons whilst I'm trying to get to sleep tonight, darn.

As for me, I'm merely an 'enabler', but THAT is entirely new thread. Anyone want to start it? Here's a simple example of 'enabling':

'Say Hon, since you bought a 'Peanut', howz aboutz we git a 'Goober'? That actually worked for me!

Evil, huh?

hh

Gisela had me beat hand's down, too (lol) but I've got all the symptoms, incl.checking hosta leaves by flashlight. Those poor worrisome neighbors...

my God woman.. how many handles do you have ... lol ...

i figured there might be some new peeps who would enjoy this ...

ken

Paul

Beverly

PS: Good call Paul.

ken

Don B.

Paul