When I realized that my garden budget needed to be supplemented (four or five years ago).

What do you enjoy most about what you are presently doing in the garden?

I'm digging out plants to overwinter, taking cuttings, cleaning up for fall. I enjoy the cleaning up -- something about the getting of things in order for winter -- making the garden secure -- a battening down of hatches perhaps . . . It just feels right.

Mixed -- if it grows I'll plant it. I enjoy the challenge. This is my gardening philosophy/mission statement

I grow plants for many reasons:
to please my eye or to please my soul,
to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience,
for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.

. . . and of course, "To boldly grow . . . "

I have too many, but the most useful, other than DMG, is my Readers Digest Encyclopedia of garden plants. I often acquire plants under circumstances that require me to figure out exactly what it is that I've dragged home.

I used to until I grew tired of the of the lifestyle ads that crowded out the good reading. Some of them are to gardening as real life is to Cosmo.

Many, but I buried them. To be honest, I'm not sure what I would call a disaster -- other than planting goutweed and I've never done that.

I've made lots of mistakes, but that's the best way to gain experience -- well maybe not the best.

A long-handled, three pronged cultivator with the two outside prongs cut off. I use it for reaching into flowerbeds to "hook out" sneaky weeds. I also use my hook to remove poor performers. It's a wonderful puttering tool.

Hmm, I guess the former. I write humour primarily, and gardening is a subject I happen to know reasonably well. This, I suppose, gives me the raw material that can be turned into something funny. As a storyteller I write non-gardening pieces that will keep an audience entertained.

I need to do more with colour coordination, but that's a problem having the philosophy described in the question above. I've always felt that you can't do much wrong in a garden providing you enjoy it. I will say that I've always wanted to create a maze or labyrinth, but I don't have the space -- maybe the next garden.

The Internet is super for the theoretical/dreaming/communicating of ideas side of this wonderful pastime, but "gardening" is a verb, and getting dirt under the old fingernails can't be done by computer. I don't see that it could ever change real "gardening".

Dandelion, because we have a local festival that is a lot of fun and they pay me to be MC.

I have a huge (for Canada) elephant ears beside the front door which always makes people smile, plus I have a Congo cockatoo (impatiens niammniamensis) that kids love. Oh, and the pumpkin that climbed the fence was quite a sight. It was gradually dragged down by its own weight. I think these are the only humorous ones. I have lots of grouchy plants though.

Bush or Gore :-)

Also see this weeks "Who's Who in Gardening" for Biography