by Glen Williams
December 11, 1998
Are you a collector? We have A and B type personalities, perhaps we should add a C type for Collector. I have an acquaintance who has over 6,000 different brands of beer bottles and cans. I would have thought that the introduction of micro breweries would have put him over the edge a few years ago. Not so. It has only encouraged him.He , his wife, and children now spend summer vacations going up and down the west coast pursuing his collection.
He recently called me , with that elated but hushed voice known only to collectors and Pinky Lee, that he had just acquired 17 vintage bottles from Japan from the fifties and would I like to come over and see them? I wanted to ask him if they had red petiolles .. but didn't. I went over and saw his bottles and caught his enthusiasm for his quest for just a minute. Fortunately it was a cold day and we were in his hay loft looking at a crate of bottles with strange labels and not one said giboshi on it... so I broke free of the dreaded Collector's Reverie. He houses his collection in his barn ( it was that or divorce) in boxes stored on carefully constructed shelves. All are labeled by year, location, duration of brand, and any history he has found.He asked me wistfully if I wanted to see his collection from Greenland. Why not- I figured it couldn't be that large. Live and learn.
I have not made as much fun of his collection as I was tempted to, because I began to think (not for the first time) of the fact that I was approaching the the magic number of 900. That is 900 different different" registered"( well actually not all are registered :-)) hosta cultivars, species , and sports. When I think of this it no longer seems like a rational universe. I thought about Descartes and his famous signature line; " I think therefore I am." I rewrote it in several ways. I think therefore I have hostas. This appeared to offer an oxymoron I could not escape. Or possibly, I am and therefore I have hostas . Not too bad. I THINK I AM IN NEED OF MANY HOSTAS. There is was, truth and a question all wrapped up in a single statement. A type C Personality.
Why?
If you have more than 15 different types of hostas you are a COLLECTOR. No fudging around. 15 is the critical mass number.The top ten plus five. For those at the beginning of their collections let me offer some pleasant evasions to the admission that you are a COLLECTOR and a final revelation:
1. They are so easy to grow. (Sure they are and how many crowns to you have of Uzi No Mai, White Trouble, and Banana Sundae?)
2. They are so inexpensive. (I am not even going to acknowledge the idiocy of this one.)
3. Once mature they are weed free. (sure if you wait 5 to 7 years and plant them 5 inches apart.)
4. The family and neighbors enjoy them so. (Yeah, and so why do calls to come out into the garden go unanswered? And guests eyes glaze over when you point out the finer points of rectiolia 'Aurea'.
5. I want to buy and raise many hostas because they are beautiful. (...and are 50 hostas more beautiful than 5?...I think not!)
6. "I saw this picture and just had to have..." (Well at least this approaches some self-awareness but not enough to impress your therapist.)
7. It is a great investment. (YES, and that is why the price of what you bought 2 years ago is this year only half as much.)
8. It will increase the value of the house when we come to sell it. (This is really scrapping the bottom of the barrel . Number one you are never going to move and leave those hostas behind. Even if you do, any experienced person seeing well kept gardens will disappear as quickly as logic in congressional hearings.Who needs the work.? You might sell to the young and the naive (like you were when you started to become a collector) but they don't have any money.)
9. We can leave it to the kids to treasure. (Hmmm... and all those summers of enforced weeding and garden maintenance made no impression on the kids. Don't kid yourself, right now visions of bulldozers fill their heads.)
10. I became a collector because I am a miserable and selfish human being and my collection is a mere reflection of an acquisitive nature, a self-indulgent spirit, and the uncontrollable desire to have the newest, the best, the most expensive and quite simply all hostas in both hemispheres. I will never share them unless they have nematodes or crown rot.And my true desire is to make other people jealous in the process. (now don't you feel better now that you have said it?)
Otherwise I am a rational and humane being who happened to see a clump of hostas in the cemetery one day.....
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