I am a victim of the blogging bug.

It all stems from an email that crossed my path in late September 2010.  A local seed company offered the opportunity to compete in a Spring Veggie Growing challenge requiring blogs posted over the course of 3 months.  With the $1000 prize easily persuading me to enter, it wasn’t long before the prize became secondary – I got hooked on the writing, which is just as well because I didn’t win.  But over the course of the competition I made 84 posts about the ups and downs of life in my garden, which can be best described as a work in progress.

Once the competition ended I felt lost.  I didn’t have a forum to share the crazy thoughts and observations that routinely enter my head.  So when they re-launched a new version of the competition:  The Autumn Veggie Growing Challenge.  Not only did I get to grow the much maligned turnip and Brussels sprouts, I had the opportunity to write again.  (For the record – my family actually enjoyed the turnips – who’d have thought it?)  So 101 entries later and a growing following of loyal voters …..   Two of my favourite things were satisfied:  gardening and writing.  Life is good.

An unexpected side effect of the blogging is my garden is looking the best it has ever been.  Never before has my garden been “spring ready” in the middle of winter.  Normally it is languishing in a state of disarray with the decaying remains of summer crops past still there entangled with weeds, which require a mammoth effort to sort out in the spring – inevitably delaying the planting of summer crops.  The need to blog generates a need to “do something – anything” in the garden in order to have something to talk about.  Without blogging my garden will suffer – I must go on.  I must blog.  I need to for the sake of the garden.

Come again soon – I’m just getting started.

Sarah the Gardener  : o )