A site after my own heart. This has the kind of encouraging prose and practical garden tips that just inspire you to “get going and get gardening”. It doesn’t seem to be often updated at this time, but there is lots of information and plenty of pages on all sorts of subjects. Good rainy day or winter cyber garden reading.
“If a man is alone in the garden and speaks,
and there is no woman to hear him,
is he still wrong?
A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining,
the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing,
and the lawn mower is broken.
– James Dent”
Ranting on Internet Changes
Excuse me while I complain a bit.
I have been looking at some of the garden-oriented directories on the web. I am very disappointed to see how many of them are weighted with commercial sites. One of the wonderful things about web-surfing some years ago was the selection of truly original personal web-sites. You must blog and search through the blogs for that now. Crass commercialism has stultified and ruined the web. Yes, I think so.
Sure, entrepreneurial opportunity is important, but it has sold itself out to worthless repetitions in the case of website individualism and the gardener to gardener sharing of ideas.
That is one of the best ways to garden. Better than books or seminars by far. And the web used to be full of truly insightful and quirky web people.
They are still out and around, but the directories aren’t much help in finding them. And no, I am not just complaining because my site is only mediocre. I haven’t put that much effort into of late…that is all 😉
To be below the horizon is a bit discouraging. But …that doesn’t explain the search results of too many blah, cooky-cutter, commercial sites. I mean they don’t even have original content half the time. Just business geeks that buy the ready-made content filler.
NOT ALL… of course there are always the exceptions. White Flower Farm always was exceptional with or without their character, Amos Pettingill. They provide good plant info with some wit and originality. But there is something about the down-home “man of the earth” sort of reporting on the garden that really appeals to me.
Some history on Amos Pettingill, and a bit about white forsythia:
http://www.arhomeandgarden.org/plantoftheweek/articles/White_Forsythia.asp