If you write or want to make money writing, (and it doesn’t have to be about gardening) you might want to check out these two -suddenly free - ebooks on copywriting. I paid about $25 bucks for one of them 5 or 6 years ago. And now they’re free.
Check it out and download it here.
But I’m glad I didn’t wait.
Over the years, I’ve written (fairly clearly I think) about not allowing certain kinds of plants into your garden.
There are the outright garden thugs. And these include plants such as Crown Vetch, Goutweed (variegated and green leaf) and Artemesia ‘Silver King’. This would certainly include grasses such as Phragmites (variegated ribbon grass) and a few others that deserve to be planted far from my gardens.
Simple garden thugs would include a range of vicious spreaders such as Euphorbia epithymoides (Spurge).
My new garden has all of these planted by previous owners.
Karma.
Whatever it was, whoever it was to. I apologize profoundly and sincerely.
OK - you’re bored and not doing what you want to do.
My moment was when my kid brother died. I decided then and there that if I had to die young, I didn’t want to leave anything on the table.
My only problem is that I keep adding things to the table and I think there’s more there now then there was then. The older I get, the more I find I really want to do. I have more projects in my radar than I can count. I want them all.
Life’s a giggle.
I never thought I’d say this but good for Home Depot. (I haven’t heard any thunder and the roof is still up where it belongs).
Home Depot announced
that it will voluntarily stop selling traditional pesticides and herbicides in its stores across Canada by the end of 2008 and will increase its selection of environmentally friendly alternatives.
This is ahead of schedule for the Ontario ban that is supposed to take place in 2009. And well ahead of other provinces who have not yet put bans or timetables in place.
Damn, this might mean I have to actually get an orange hat. 
Mind you, that’s two now for HD. They also sponsor Tony - my secret red-neck passion - Stewart in Nascar.
I laid out the first designs.
I lugged and sweated the 6×6 beams into place.
I carried all the cardboard.
I laid all the cardboard.
I loaded all the bark chips.
I unloaded all the bark chips.
I took the pictures.
Mayo spread the mulch with a rake.
I lugged the peat moss.
I spread the peat moss.
I set up the irrigation to wet the peat moss.
I turned the peat so it would get uniformly wet.
And who do you think will get the credit for building this raised bed?
Right.
p.s. that’s “Oh shoot” but it got lost in the wind.
One of the things I’m really excited about right now is the new way I’m looking at setting up online gardening seminars. A few brave souls stuck around for a few hours of webinars, gave me some great feedback and pushed my thinking into the 21st century. While I’ll be making a video this coming week on that, I thought I’d turn the same lessons to blogging.
So here’s what I’m thinking about and I’d love your thoughts.
The old publishing model went something like: editor gets a thought about subject X. Finds writer. Editor and writer to and fro and work out story details. At this point, the story is between the editor and the writer. (and yes, sometimes the details vary - the writer comes up with the story etc)
Bottom line though, the decision to publish is made by the editor and communication is between the editor and the writer.
The editor involves a support team to put out the magazine.
Magazine printed.
Reader reads.
End of story. Oh yeah, the odd reader writes editor and gets published in next issue.
So the established process goes something like writer>editor>reader.
I think the technology of the Net has really given us disintermediation and that the time and technology is ripe to take full advantage of it.
But for the most part we aren’t.
Most writers (and I include bloggers here) are stuck in the old writer>editor>reader model. What has happened is that the writer has become the writer/editor so the process now looks like writer/editor>reader.
And again, a few folks make comments on blogs but every garden blogger I know laments the fact that only a very small proportion of subscribers actually comment.
There’s a message there folks.
Writer/editor>reader doesn’t fully involve the readership.
There’s still an editor in the process and that editor still stands between the writer and the reader. The writer has become the editor.
Look around the Net and figure out how many websites are written by the writer/editor without regard for what readers want to read. Without regard for what’s important to readers. Writers have become their own editors and make decisions accordingly but it’s still a one-way street. The old publishing model isn’t dead; it has simply moved online.
The power of the Net is such that we can now involve our readers in the process. We can ask them what they want to read, what they want to know and then we can respond appropriately.
The process becomes writer>reader>writer. A circular process and an ongoing one.
I already do this in some small way with my web sites. I use software to discover what folks are looking for in the Net and then I write about those things. My thinking is that if you’re looking for something, then I’ll write about it for you. Over the last 3-4 years, there have been some 3000 pages put up on my sites about just about every gardening topic you could think of - and still folks keep asking new questions. 
New software lets me take questions and comments directly on my sites and I can answer them right there. Yes, I still make writer/editor decisions but more and more I’m involving my readers in the process.
In that case it’s reader>writer>reader> Fun stuff.
This leads me back to the seminar series where I’m setting up the same kind of system only much more transparently - it is much more direct and obvious. This system is going to be reader>writer>reader>writer>reader>etc. This will be a circular system and we’re going to harness the power of the Internet (as far as I can push it anyway) in an ongoing loop of having readers determine the nature of what they want to know/read. In that case, I’ll be part of the process but not necessarily determining where it will go.
So what’s the point of all this? I think I’ve got a writer>reader>writer process working as best I can on my websites. I’ve got it designed for the seminar series but I haven’t quite figured out how and what to do with this blog, I think blogging is still pretty much stuck in the writer/editor>reader process (with small proportions of readers commenting) and I have to think about that.
My point (and you knew I was going to get there sooner or later) is that the vast majority of garden blogs and websites are stuck in a writer/editor>reader process and will never grow out of it.
Is this important to you? Is this important to your readers? Or is blogging the place for this writer/editor>reader function?
Are blogs the new garden magazines?
If your significant other is a guy who doesn’t “get” flowers and how much they mean to you. Try dropping a hint - like “check out this url sweetie”. It may not do much good, and if that’s the case you may simply have to go to the Lysistrata method of negotiation.
But don’t say I said so.
