Hi Everyone,
We haven't done this for a couple years, and I keep seeing new and seldom-seen names around here, so let's find out again this year who's here and, hopefully, a little bit about everyone!
This is the 2014 Rocky Mountain Gardening Role Call! Welcome all Newbies, Lurkers, and even all you Oldies! Please sign in to let us know you're here with us on the Friendliest Little Gardening Forum in the West!
Please tell us a little about yourselves. Where do you live, and if it's in one of the big cities, roughly where you are in the urban area. What are your gardening interests? Veggies, perennials, annuals, trees, bushes--something else??? Do you garden in the ground, raised beds, pots? Are you new to gardening, you've been doing it for a few years now and are "getting there," or have you been doing it for fifty years--but there's still always some surprises!?? What do you love to do in the garden, what do you hate to do!, what do you WISH you could do??? [If you think of something you'd like to ask about when you're posting here, we'd love to hear from you, but please start a separate thread with your gardening questions so everyone will see them and have an opportunity to respond--and so we can keep this thread just for introductions and meeting each other.]
The first couple years I started this thread I asked everyone to tell us about themselves--but forgot to tell anything about me, so here it is! I think I may have been born with dirt in my veins! When I was three I went out to our garden to pick some peas to eat raw and since the peas were right next to the lawn I sat down on the grass to start picking--and I sat on a bee! My first (painful!) introduction to bees! By the mid-'50s my parents had started growing and selling perennials--for the post-WW II building boom--and by the time I was 10 or 11 I was out in the growing fields, barefoot, waiting on the customers and digging up the field-grown plants for them. My uncle, right next door, had a bunch of greenhouses where he grew cut flowers, was a florist (my father was a florist before the Depression--long before me!), and where he grew and sold veggies and bedding plants in spring. I helped, at different times, with all that stuff too!
Then I grew up, life got real, and I had to get a real job! I grew up in a Chicago suburb and moved to Denver--my Home Sweet Home--in 1964. In 1993 I finally decided it was time to start doing something I actually enjoyed again and I got a job at a small garden center on north Pecos Street in Denver, about a year later they moved to a very large space across from Westminster Mall, and a couple years after that they discovered they had bitten off more than they could chew and they closed their retail location completely--they still have a large growing facility on 73rd Avenue in far north Denver. Commercial growing is not my thing, it's the customers I enjoy, so at that point, 1996, I went over to Paulino's, working in the perennial department, and stayed there till 2000 when I was able to go back to the job I really love, flying! But since I'm an Officially Retired Little Olde Lady now I guess I'd probably reverse what it says in my bio and say that gardening and perennials are my first love, and flying is my second love! And, the gardening I plan to continue doing as long as I can walk, crawl, roll, or in any other possible way, get out into the dirt! I can't imagine being alive and not being able to dig in the dirt and watch things grow!
I live in Thornton, on the north end of the Denver Metro area and, unfortunately, I have a very typically small residential lot. Virtually every square inch of exposed soil--if you could call it that--is planted with something! Yes, I do still have some lawn, tho in my backyard (where I do most of my gardening) I have to admit that a little bit more tends to disappear every year! I've lived in this house for ten years now, and when I moved in I started with some of the most horrendous (potter's quality) clay I had ever seen. I keep working on it--and it's gradually starting to improve! Still has a ways to go, but most good things take time! I have a painfully small area for veggies, but I do my best to make use of every little bit of it! And, besides the veggies, I grow--you guessed it--perennials! I love the amazing variety of perennials, and I love to try different ones to see how they work for me. (And I love being able to give things away at the swaps if I decide they're not right for me!) It doesn't seem like I change very many things each year, but when I look back at pictures of my perennial gardens the first couple years after I moved in here I'm surprised by how VERY different they are now! My perennial beds will continue to evolve, and I'll continue to enjoy the ever-changing forms and colors of my perennials. I also have a pretty large compost pile, but that's a whole other story and maybe one of these days I'll need to start an "updated" compost thread! But I can't imagine not having a compost pile, and I consider it very worthwhile to use the space for the compost rather than more planting space.
Just one more comment! When people have questions here on RMG, especially perennial questions, I really enjoy being able to try to help with ideas and recommendations. That's why I keep hanging around this place! Oh, and the great company helps too! :-)
Now it's your turn! Who's here in 2014?
A gardener forever,
Skybird
margaretmontana
smdmt
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