Temperature in one of the mini-greenhouses - not October, but June!
I recognize of course that people all have their different ways of doing things. Maybe some people like to be told in exact detail what they ought to be doing. Perhaps the novice gardener needs step-by-step instructions, but I think a competent gardener knows more-or-less instinctively what needs doing. "Oh, it's October, so I had better harvest the pumpkins. And plant some bulbs. And start raking up leaves..." You know the sort of thing I mean?
This brings us back to the perennial question "Why do I write a blog?". I think perhaps some people don't see the difference between a website and a blog. In my opinion, a website is primarily a relatively static resource to be consulted (this is the place to look up what jobs you should be doing in October!), whereas a blog (let's give it its original full title - "web-log") is primarily a more dynamic arrangement for "logging" one's own activities - a bit like writing a diary that other people can see. Well, that's the way I see it anyway.
Lara admiring the chillis - June 2011
I know through interaction with many of my readers via Comments and emails that they read my blog daily, and follow what I've been getting up to, even though many of them are not gardeners themselves. Perhaps they like that daily reassurance that things are ticking over the same as always? For my part, the blog serves as a Garden Diary, enabling me to record in words and pictures what has happened (mostly in the garden, but to a lesser extent in the kitchen). This helps me to learn from my efforts, because I have a ready reference available for comparing things like sowing / planting / harvesting dates and year-on-year performance.
My first cold-frame (not on a par with the one that Jane recently won for me!
I have to say though that searching for something on the blog has recently become more difficult. Have you noticed how the Search facility in Blogger has changed? You used to be able to search all the text in an entire blog for the occurrence of a particular word or phrase. Now the search only looks at the post titles, which is of very little use at all! What this means is that now a reader who remembers that I wrote about something that they are currently interested in, or gave a tip that they want to re-visit, may not be able to find it. Very frustrating. It almost tempts me to move to website format , with categorised and indexed content. ("Almost", I said).
OK, I've had my say. What do YOU think? Do you want rules and instructions, or do you want the daily "story"?
