Addiction
Now I know that this blog post is a personal rant but this is why I started this blog in the first place: to get stuff off my chest. And this post fits right in with the current political and economic craziness.
Every week, I stop by Chapters Indigo on my way home to check out new book releases and garden magazines. I love bookstores! My magazine purchases sometime get out of hand but I feel like it’s important to stay up to date.
The best gardening magazines come from the UK and they’re not cheap but I love them. You get tips, book suggestions, gardener profiles, and best of all, you get to see labelled plants. Plant identification is an important skill for green professionals.
I also love the feel of the glossy magazines. They cost anywhere from $10 to $20 and I treasure them. My personal favourite is Gardens Illustrated: it has spectacular pictures but I also love reading professional gardener profiles. Unfortunately, to buy a copy you’ll have to kiss the carpet at Chapters Indigo.
On my knees
Incredibly, Chapters Indigo keeps all garden magazines on the very bottom of their shelf, which means that, tired as I am after landscaping all day, I literally have to get down on my knees to access the magazines. When I brought this up to the manager she offered to assist me so I could bend down safely! Very funny! I’m not that old but it makes you wonder.
I’m pretty confident the average gardener is over fifty years old, so why make people get down on their knees just to reach the magazines? I asked the same manager and she replied that the position on the shelf reflects sale numbers. To which I replied that it was hard to buy a garden magazine when I have to get on my knees to reach it. It’s not helping sales at all. Not many people are desperate enough to crawl on dirty store carpets just to purchase a magazine.
Now, every time I go to Chapters Indigo I laugh and drop to my knees because I crave the information published inside those garden magazines. If I could buy them somewhere else, I would. For now I suffer. Perhaps I will start stretching before entering the store.
