Steve Hartman: Weed addict on the road to recovery
CATSKILL, New York -- You may remember a couple years ago I confessed to a weed addiction.
I only did it at my place in upstate New York, after the kids were in bed, but the fact was, I could not stop pulling the things.
Mugwort, Canada thistle and leafy goldenrod were some of my favorites.
I realized the extent of my addiction only after my cameraman interviewed my wife Andrea about it.
"He goes out at 7 o'clock at night and weeds until dark. I mean, sometimes he's out there past dark," she said.
And her point is?
"It's not weeding a garden. It's weeding 5 acres."
Four and a half -- technically.
See, a few years earlier, I had this idea to turn a weedy hillside into beautiful prairie full of native wildflowers and grasses. I contacted Neil Diboll, who would eventually become my dealer.
Neil owns the Prairie Nursery in Westfield, Wisconsin. He got me hooked on weeds through gateway plants like purple coneflower, compass plant and smooth aster.
"I was trying to get you hooked. Yes, my product is highly addictive. It's called love of nature," he said.
But here's the problem: Before you see those flowers in the magazine, you often need to spend a great deal of time weeding a new prairie meadow, and Neil made no mention of how addicting that can be.
I would come out here every night and dread it. And then a switch flipped, and I started coming out here and loving it.
"Weeding can induce a meditative state," Neil said. "And that is therapy for all of us in this crazy world we live in when you can just tune everything out and focus on one single-minded purpose."
Also, just as a practical matter, after investing hundreds of hours out here, what else can you do? Just give up on the whole project?
"I could live without it," Andrea said.
"You want your husband back, don't you?" my cameraman asked.
"No, I don't know if I could live with how defeated my husband would feel if we gave it up," she said.
After this story first aired in 2015, I thought a lot about her hesitation. I realized you can take a hobby too seriously.
Which is why I'm happy to report that I am now a recovering weedaholic. Oh, I'll still clip the occasional spotted knapweed, but I don't obsess like I used to, choosing instead to focus more on three other blossoms, my kids -- growing like weeds in the only garden we tend that truly matters.
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