What Does Your Shopping Cart Say About You?

I have been rather emboldened by other gardeners' recent reactions to my Lazy Bed Construction confession. So much so that I will confess to at least one other odd behavior: When I'm out shopping at garden centers, I enjoy looking at other people's shopping carts and trying to figure out what kind of gardeners they are.

I try to look at the cart first, so I can guess by the plants whether the person pushing it is a first-time homebuyer, formal herb gardener, die-hard veggie grower, someone who has to have the latest variety of everything, or a shade gardener with a huge hosta addiction.

I rarely do find out whether I'm wrong or right in my assumptions, but the fun is in playing the game anyway. It's not about making judgements--there is no condemnation in my thoughts--but rather about idle curiousity and a love of imagining other people's gardens. (That cute young couple with the lovely Japanese maple... will it be planted under the window of what they hope will become their first child's bedroom?)

Of course, I play the game with my own cart, too. What does my shopping cart say about me?

I think that this one definitely gives away a few things: 1) I'm a fairly eclectic gardener, meaning that I don't have just one set garden style. 2) I'm not a typical plant snob, as evidenced by the purchase of groundcover sedums and "lowly" herbs like thyme, rosemary, and lemon verbena. 3) I am a huge foliage freak. See the 'Royal Glissade' and 'Palisandra' coleus, carex flagellifera, 'Gage's Shadow' perilla, 'Silver Falls' dichondra, pennisetum rubrum, sedum cauticola, etc.

I may be the only person who plays my little game, but I bet that almost all of us have looked down at our carts as we're waiting in line at the garden center and wondered: "What does this little collection of plants say about me?"