We’ve come a long way in garden blogging.

I remember the early days, when we were careful to not reveal too much information about ourselves. After all, who were our readers?  Who was really looking at our blogs?

Few of us posted pictures of ourselves, mentioned other family members by name, or even provided an email address.  If you wanted to get in touch with any of us, you had to leave a comment.

Times have changed.  

This past weekend 90 or so of us garden bloggers met up in Asheville, North Carolina for our fifth garden bloggers’ fling.  Some of us have been to all five flings and greet each other now as good friends who only get to see each other once or twice year. Others came for the first time or returned after missing a fling or two. It was a grand, good, gardeners gathering.  I give it four G’s out of four G’s possible in my rating scale of gardening events.

Yesterday, I attended a regional Garden Writers Association meeting at the Taltree Arboretum in Valparaiso, Indiana, and gave a talk on garden blogging.  One of the challenges I made to the group was to either start a garden blog in the next few days, and I would help promote it through my blog,  or if they already had a garden blog, do something to improve it in the next few days.

For my blog, I improved it by adding an “about me” page.

The keen observer will note that on my “about me” page, I have a last name that is like a botanical name.  It is not obvious how it is pronounced. Just like with  botanical names, some people will avoid saying it so they aren’t called out for mis-pronounciation. Or they will ask how it is pronounced before saying it. Or they will hear me say it and realize that they have been silently mis-pronouncing it and are sure glad they found out how it is pronounced before they attempted to say it out loud.

I like that.  It is just one more clue that I might be a gardening geek because even my last name is like a botanical name that is often mis-pronounced.