I agree with you both. Too many good garden blogs and not enough time. Maybe the power in garden blogs is in the ability to pick and choose amongst them all. I’m also a big fan of Garden Voices.

Lynsey:

I accept your post was mostly about the problems of search engines and not garden blogs, and I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear. Mostly I wonder if there is any way all of us can learn something from your comments. Since we are all directly involved with garden blogging, I think it’s sometimes hard for us to see things from the perspective of an outsider. In rereading my post I can see it came out seeming much more critical of you than I intended. It was more my intention to start a discussion by being a bit controversial.

I think in general as a community we are very closed and inaccessible, and I think that shows in the problems you were having with search engines. I also don’t understand why we are not more connected with other blogging communities, for example food blogs. Maybe it’s because other blogging communities are just as closed as we are.

Best wishes for the new year, and welcome to the world of garden blogging. Good luck with your garden. Thanks for your comments. I’m looking forward to seeing your new blog as it develops. I’m also looking forward to any ideas you come up with to address the problems you identified in your post.

To Everyone:

As we go into the new year, I will be trying to come up with ideas to improve my blog and address some of these issues. I would welcome any comments or suggestions anyone has to offer.

The issue at hand isn’t whether there are good gardening blogs – I’m sure there are – it’s just very difficult – time consuming, more accurately, to find them. The tools we have available are factory machines, presently incapable of refined i.e. human values. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is what my Dad would say. It’s just like the article you’ve written about the Dutch farmer and the more creative cheeses etc – I wish I lived there – not only would I buy his products with great joy, I’d be wanting to spend some time as a volunteer learning how to make or encourage the production of the product. All of which would lead to greater involvement and understanding of the farmer, the animals, and the processes.

I believe that in that article you’ve captured the difference that makes the difference in writing blogs, and finding them. I can’t find any writing of a similar nature commenting on the efficient beauty of the factory farm machine. Most people pay quite a lot of attention to the look and feel of their blogs. It’s anything but a mechanised process, even though most of it is automated. The issue, for me, is the search engines can’t speed the process of finding good content – that requires, as with your farmer, the human touch, and perhaps more importantly, the application of human(e) values.

For me, the process has started (ahem, you might’ve noticed the links starting in the Marginalia side bar, one to a blog er, nearby). I expect to write about my own garden in a month or two – I’m preparing the soil even as I write here.

Thanks for stopping by, Lynsey