Garden Blog = Garden Photos?

A recent discussion at Cold Climate Gardening has gotten my eyebrow raised a bit. (aside from just the comment discussion)

Lets see...why do I bother blogging if I can't afford a camera to slather beautiful, numerous pics of a pristine garden, glowing leaves, bugs and butterflies across every freaking page of my blog?

Can you really have a garden blog without all those photos? Uh, yeah, it's just a lot more boring for visitors. And it also means I can't participate in communal blogger activities such as Green Thumb Sunday or Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

OK, so do I care if I have 5,000 hits a day? Not so much...

I started my blog with the express purpose of reporting what is going on in my garden at any given time - what's going wrong, what's blooming at the moment, how the veg are faring with different techniques.

I really suck at keeping a journal, and this seemed like more fun anyway. But mostly, it is for me to check back on and to leave something for my children, or even grandchildren for that matter, to get to know me much more personally as a 'grower of things' after I'm gone. To give them glimpses of what I was thinking at any given time, or possibly glean a bit of garden advice here and there, what ticked me off and what made me happy. Why I did things I did, grew what I grew. I kick myself in the butt for not having listened as a kid to my grandmothers ramblings about growing everything from asparagus to roses and from weather to bugs. I would have loved to have had a blog of hers to check back on!!

I don't spell check either. Does this make me a bad blogger? No one is perfect, and this isn't edited newspaper press. It's me, my thoughts, my personality and so, with it go all my faults. Do I want my kids reading this in 50 years and thinking, "Wow, not even one spelling error. Mom must have been one writing uptight bitch!" Uh, no. My kids already know I'm not perfect. And there are sooo many people that really stink at spelling, so they shouldn't blog at all? How saddening, to me, that thought is. As long as I can figure out what the blogger means, I read it!

Someone commented that they'd heard (sounds like bro-said-his-friend-from-his-cousins-wife-twice-removed-mother-in-laws-sisters-dog) that someone wouldn't even read a blog that has no pics.

Well!!! Best skip mine then!

Hate to burst peoples bubbles, but not everyone has a cam, or can afford one. (I know people that can't afford a loaf of bread, for pete sake - lets not go there.) Does this make them a bad garden blogger?

Not everyone wants to slather pics across their pages either. (security, privacy, stalkers and all that jazz.) Does this make them a bad garden blogger?

Not responding to comments. Does this make them a bad blogger?

As far as comments go (for ME personally) of course I love getting them. If someone has some advice about a prob I'm having - have at it! Happy for me that something is going right for a change - tell me so! I do try to respond to all the comments, though. I appreciate them bunches! Do I expect everyone that visits to comment? Nope.

But, there are so many bloggers and so many ways TO blog, and yes, many, many ways to go about pics and comments, that I don't think there should be any rule. Ever. If it's your personal blog and you're not looking for some kind of award or reward, do your own thing, damn it!

Heh, kinda like Blogger Bling and blogger addiction I posted about ages ago...That bling still bugs me.

Holy Cow!

I have a moonflower bud!!

YES!!! Woohooooo!

Patience, gwass-hop-ah ........ patience.

Beautiful!

I can almost say perfect!

We had a wonderful rain yesterday - only 3/4 of an inch and it won't make much of a dent, but we'll take it, and happily.

D and I stopped dead in the middle of the yard yesterday evening, as the sun sat on the horizon, and simply stared. I was so awestruck at the beauty in our yard that I almost burst into tears. D was just silent. (Men, you know, would never admit to the beauty of such frilly, silly things as flowers pulling at their heart strings).

It's simply indescribable. Oh, I wish I had a camera! It totally sucks that our yard is so gorgeous this year and I can't even share it!

The double impatiens I overwintered and planted in the bathroom sink (the bottom cabinet I painted white and use it to hold gardening tools and extra pots) Are covered with blooms. The old vanity chair I attached screening to and planted is simply overflowing with WS'd petunias and snap dragons. (Yeah, I make lots of wacky planters!)

My one datura that germed is a freaking tree! It's covered with buds, so I'm waiting patiently. The 4 o'clocks are also covered with tons of blooms. The toad flax got a bit bent and messy looking from the wind and downpour, but who cares! They're still beautiful. The candy tuft is starting to open, and the globe amaranth have the beginnings of the most powerfully, bright purple blooms I've ever seen! The buddleia are getting ready to burst, the bee balm are beautiful, the lillies my Aunt gave me years ago have the biggest and brightes yellow blooms I've ever seen on them!

The koi are happy as, well, fish can be, and growing like mad. The water has a deep tinge of algae green, but as long as they're happy and healthy, I could care less. The DIY filters are working perfectly this year. I need to get my daughter to take pics with her phone, I think! We ended up with 4 baby koi (I'm really glad we didn't save all those eggs!) that we moved inside yesterday. I would have rather have left them out, but the dragon fly larva were starting to feast. I have lots of daphnia to keep them going for a while, and there will soon be mosquito larva in the daphnia bucket too.

The containers by the pond overfloeth with WS'd snaps. They are the best I've ever had! The Moon Flowers are going gangbusters! Yay! No buds yet, but they are climbing the arbor by the door like mad. I sheared the salvia a couple of weeks ago and it has thrown out twice the blooms for the second round.

Since the cattail yanking, the bog is looking gorgeous. I found the most beautiful spider on the blanket flowers - Bright yellow with red stripes - I almost touched him, he blended right in!

There are tons of tomatos coming, the peppers are still full of blooms (I wish they'd get to peppering already) lots of zucchini and cucumber blossoms. The green beans are profuse with blooms. I pulled a second cabbage today to have boiled with meatloaf.

I thank God every single day for the beauty I'm allowed to have and for the wonderful people who sent me seeds so that I could actually wander among that beauty in my own yard. Thank you Kim, Sissy and Don. You all have no idea how bright and wonderful you've made my yard and garden. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Color UNcoordinated

I can dress myself - and even match colors. I swear, I can.

But when it comes to my flowers, I can't help it. I LIKE red and purple together. Pink and orange play off each other in an odd but rather fantastic way. My orange and maroon blanket flower and deep purple buddleia look fab caressing each others blooms.

My crayon garden runneth over. And I don't care! I absolutely adore it, just the way it is.

Honestly, I've found that people notice the individual plants much, much more when they clash. It's the oddest thing, but they do. Smaller flowers, even with the brightest colors, are usually passed by unnoticed. Clash 'em and they stick out like sore thumbs in a "look at me" sort of way. People wander down the paths a lot more slowly now and really see each plant and I wonder if this is why. Stick some toad flax next to a hosta and I swear, the sucker glows! My purple salvia is overjoyed to be cozily nestled next to the red bee balm.

In my big containers the WS'd purple petunias are absolutely illuminated next to the orange and red marigolds topped by mauve and yellow snaps. And it not only all works together, but is a stunner!

Can you tell I have a thing with purple and red?

I dumped a box of colors on the soil and my crayon garden is fab! I will never worry about coordinating colors again. Ever!

Sometimes I Really Hate Summer

Ooo, did I say that out loud? Ok, I didn't mean it...really! I just hate dry. Dry, dry, dry. Grrr.
It rained yesterday. Or so I thought.

I wandered off to the garden all smiles this morning figuring the wet ground would finally make it a little easier to yank those weeds outta the ground. Well, the paths were, ummm, moist, but as soon as I reached under a plant - dry as a freaking bone!

Alright, so this on and off sprinkle crap all day did absolutely nothing but ruin the 4th. We had tuna noodle for dinner for pete sake. On the local weather blog, people have finally begun to notice what I've been compaining about for forever = the rain keeps splitting in two to our east - half heading south, the other half heading north, and us stuck in the tiny crappy dry circle in the center. What's wrong with this picture? Watching the local radar right now, that's exactly what it's doing again today! :( The water table underneath us is ridiculously low, and our stream has all but dried up. I hope the well schedule keeps holding - that sucker is low.