Anniversaries

Sharing coffee while we're harvesting hollyhock seeds to mail to blogging friends.

* This article is in celebration of paperblog's 2nd anniversary. Have you been there? Click here to visit their gardening community. It's fun!
 

Delightful Sweet Peas. Allow them free reign over your deck or patio. Easy to grow from seed.

Earlier this year, I was helping a friend get a brand new blog off the ground. He's a great writer, with a quirky point of view, just the thing we writers love to discover, as we wander through the blogosphere.

Surround Tulip bulbs with Daffodils & Ornamental Onions so critters won't find the bulbs and eat them.

He was very excited and I was excited for him. So much so, that I didn't have the heart to tell him how very long it takes for a blogger to get noticed.

Though, it's not nearly as hard as it used to be. I sent him over to paperblog, to register his blog and, hopefully, get his blog noticed way faster than the old school method I was forced to use.

Neat, sweet and petite.. Baby Bellflowers

I started my blog back in the dark ages.

In 3 short weeks, I'll celebrate my 7th year of blogging. Hard to believe that I could drone on for seven solid years about trying to keep a garden brightly blooming this high up in the Wasatch Mountains.

Short summers, weird soil, June snows, September frosts... My blogging tagline should read: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." :))

Some of this is a 'heritage garden.' These are Mom's Bearded Iris.

I was a blogger long before blogging was cool. There was no Pinterest, no Twitter, no Facebook ~ restricted to college kids, at the time. Whenever I'd tell people I had a blog, they'd look at me funny. The few who knew what blogs were, thought it was just another dumb idea of Kate's.

Stunning Double Hollyhocks tower (7 feet tall) over shorter perennials.

But, those of us who were into blogging knew it was more than a dumb idea. We'd discovered something pretty special.

It offered us something so very valuable. You see, before blogging, my only outlet was to bore friends to tears talk passionately about gardening ~ to good friends in the real world. Most of whom didn't give a rat's ass about how I'd found the absolute perfect fertilizer combo for the John Cabot Roses.

I loves me some John Cabots

Through blogging, I met hundreds of people who were just as wacky as me! People who would rejoice in my successes and give heartfelt consolations on my miserable failures. [Of which, there are many. Don't even get me started on the Wisteria.]

We spoke the same language. 'Twas here that I found my peeps.

Heirloom Tulips: this type will naturalize, the bulbs divide, producing more tulips every year.

Anyhoo... fast forward to 2013 where everyone wishes they'd started a blog ages ago. (Suckers...) Because it's through social media that hobbies, like gardening, happily flourish. With people who actually care. Along the way, we meet new friends, with the same interests, from all over the globe.

If you've been on this blog before then you know I rarely pat companies on the back. But, if you're looking to expand your friend list, consider giving paperblog a try. You never know who you might meet.

* Emma, from paperblog, invited me to write about them, in celebration of their 2nd anniversary. And, I'm happy to do so. I've gotten a lot of blog followers by being connected with them. It also connects me with other bloggers that are way harder to find. Such as the folks publishing in their trekking magazine. Thanks to them, I spend a little time, every afternoon, dreaming about new places to explore.

 

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