Pot Ghetto

I re-potted this Acer palmatum 'Koto No Ito'  just
because I liked the pot and it was on sale.

The most amazing things to me about A&E’s show, “Hoarders” isn’t the amazing amount of junk that gets collected by people, it’s the amazing number of people they find to feature on the show. 

It's easy to scoff at them but it usually turns out that hoarding is a response to some kind of emotional trauma suffered by the hoarder and letting go of their junk requires them to first deal with the reason why they started their hoarding.  If I hadn’t watched this show, I would have gone on assuming that hoarding is what happens when the average person lets their collecting gene go unchecked. 

I have always allowed my collector gene to manifest itself in whatever manner it felt like.  When I went to the shooting range (i.e. the abandoned gravel quarry in the woods) with my dad and older brothers I shot my BB gun for a little while, but the real fun was collecting my dad’s spent .22 shells and putting them back in the containers they came in.  I collected baseball cards too and eventually filled my room with them.  Then I started collecting books and magazines.  Or at least not getting rid of those I had read.  And for unexplainable reasons I saved toenail clippings in an empty 35mm film canister for a year (or two) in college.  That last bit should probably never have been published because I'm pretty sure that proves I'm a bit off, but I’m willing to admit it here so I can make my point: when I watch "Hoarders" I find myself saying “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” 

Keeping my collections under control is still a struggle for me though.  So a few months ago I decided to read a book called “The Joy of Less.”  The book had a profound impact on the way I viewed the things I have and what gives them value.  It really got me to examine why I keep things like books that I will never read again.  Answer: on the off chance that by having it on my bookshelf a visiting friend will give me +1 in intelligence when they review my belongings to make their assessment of how I live my life.  I know, it’s stupid, but that’s got to be the only reason to hold onto that second copy of "Skinny Legs and All". 

So I’ve been minimizing.  I donated bags full of clothing that doesn’t fit my waistline or my current style.  I finally got to the point where I could recycle CD jewel cases without feeling like I was losing something irretrievable.  And then I threw away about 100,000 worthless baseball cards.  

This was just the first of three great baseball
card purges.

I have made a lot of progress and I have reclaimed some valuable space in my home.  But there is one area where I may have gotten a little worse: my growing “pot ghetto”.  Whoever coined that phrase must have been a poet because it perfectly captures the spirit of any collection of unused pots. 

Pot Pit

My collecting of pots started innocently enough.  My patio takes up a huge portion of my backyard so I started adding pots to it to break up the otherwise nondescript concrete.  One pot wasn’t enough and every good designer knows you can’t have an even number of design elements so two pots wouldn’t suffice either.  Three pots clustered together was a good start but it didn’t leave me enough room to grow a plumeria or some running bamboo that couldn’t be trusted in the ground.  Even numbers still don’t work so four pots wouldn’t suffice – I needed five for sure. And that was just in one corner of the patio.  There was still plenty of surface space that could use some embellishment.  So now I have pots all over the place.  I even have pots that don’t have plants.  They are just collecting cobwebs in my own personal “projects” section of my yard.  

My poor neighbors have to look at this
when they spy on me in my yard.

I justify keeping the extra pots by saying that I can use them to house impromptu plant purchases or for plant divisions or just to mix and match colors as the seasons change.  But the truth is, just like the shirts I donated to GoodWill, my taste in pots keeps changing.  I need bigger pots in newer styles.

The difference is, I haven't been able to bring myself to tear down my pot ghetto and I don't think I ever will.