Serial Hosta Collector Profile Test, by Glen
Williams
I have been researching this area intimately by reviewing my check
stubs, MasterCard charges, and old robin postings.Actually this test grows out of a couple
of postings 3 days ago which dealt with spending, Visa Cards, and guilt.I was mildly
honest when I made this profile and am wondering how other robins would do.Each question
has 4 multiple choice answers and they are given 1-4 points based on the degree of your
obsession.
In taking the test you may refer to catalogues, price lists, and the
Hosta Journal. You MAY NOT total any expenses surrounding hostas or the purchases thereof.
Such totals are considered mere abstractions of a January and February seasonal disorder
and are not to be regarded as any measure of your true psychosis (or lack thereof).
As to my results, I plan to find some cathedral door and tack them
firmly in place hoping that next year I can score higher--or lower?
1.If you were to find a slug-resistant tricolor hosta sport (red, white
and blue) with a piecrust edge growing in an old cemetery would you do:
a. Take a photo and send it to the Hosta Journal with a perky article on
hostas and nationalism?
b. Wait for seeds to develop and "borrow a few of them " just
for the sake of curiosity?"
c. Convince your mate (or a total stranger) to join you in a deer
costume and pretend to be eating the sport as you clandestinely dig it up and then
gracefully bound across the cemetery with the prize in you mouth?
d. Name and register the hosta and make a point of being buried nearby.
2. Do you seek out new and expensive hostas in order to:
a. Impress neighbors and friends?
b. Create angst and envy in the have-nots? Remember that Oscar Wilde
said that it was not enough for one to be successful-- one's friends had to fail.
c. Complete your collection of all known hostas and be in the Guinness
Book of Records under the category of Mindless Obsessions?
d. Convince your psychiatrist that you have stopped bed-wetting,
starting fires, stalking Janet Reno, and now have a mature goal in life?
3. Do you pamper your hostas to the extent where you:
a. Create micro climates by using heating pads and Goretex for those
especially hard winters?
b. Have reasonable anecdotal evidence that you your difficult breeders
respond t o photographs from the Kama Sutra?
c. Develop pet names for them and feel badly when you can not spend
enough "quality" time with them?
d. You keep a copy of The Secret Life of Plants on your night stand?
4. Does your annual visit to the doctor include discussion of any of the
following:
a. The ramifications of nematodes?
b. The possibility of antibiotics for hosta viruses?
c. Back surgery and how it might keep you weeding longer?
d. Admitting to your doctor that you were twitching so badly during the
yearly hosta auction that you paid $800.00 for H. 'Francee'.
5. In your everyday reading do you keep finding:
a. References to Lyme Regis?
b. Hidden anagrams in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus saying that you
should only buy hosta species?
c. Libidinous references to a Hosta Journal which had a fold-out center
fold of both H. 'Venus' and H. 'Aphrodite'. Or H. 'Zeus' and H. 'Big Daddy'?
d. Kiyosumiensis spelled out in your breakfast cereal?
6. In your everyday world do you see:
a. Constellations which look like the leaf of H. 'O'Ryan's Big One' or
Kevin Walek at a computer board?
b. Family members beginning to take on cordate, ovate , elliptic, and
lanceolate shapes?
c. H. 'Dorothy Benedict' on the side of milk cartons?
d. A unicorn in your garden munching on H. 'Lakeside Symphony'?
7. Do you want to teach the masses about hostas in order to:
a. Spread the joy?
b. Insure greater hosta breeding and multiplication?
c. To have a ready source of places to plant hostas that you want to
save but simply do not have room for?
d. To create a pool of admirers who will wander through your garden
looking at your treasures and paying rapt attention to your every word-- all without
stepping on a single H. 'Uzu No Mai'?
If you score between 1 and 6 you are only worthy to mix compost.
Between 7 and 14 you may raise Undulata Albomarginata
Between 14 and 21 you may do limited breeding
If you score 22 or above you are probably already a member of this hosta
robin.