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As more gardeners put the daily events into garden blogs, will anyone still make entries in paper journals? In the nineteen seventies & eighties I used the kitchen calendar to jot down frosts, rains, bloom dates and first tomatoes. By 1989 the garden had expanded too much for a small square, and I started filling the first of a series of blank books. The entries range from rapturous descriptions to weather complaints, to terse mentions of plant names and dates. Sometimes the subject has nothing to do with gardening, as family joys and tragedies, politics or world events take over the pages. Because I kept notes, even in my slapdash style, I can look at this photo and know that the holey rock with the sedum growing out of it was bought on July 7, 1993, in Cave City, Kentucky
I still keep a gardening journal with some handwritten notes on what I did in the garden, what's going on, weather, etc., but it isn't much!
ReplyDeleteI still keep quite a few paper notes. My pre-blog computer journal contained my yearly cycle of events. But a little blank book that I bought at the Cadeau contains history of individual plants and notes on my oxblood lily inventory. When walking around the garden, I note things in a little steno pad. Eventually the handwritten notes make their way in edited form to the blog.
ReplyDeleteI find my puttig thoughts down with pen on paper and typing into the computer produces very different results. I almost always prefer to take notes and write a rough draft by hand.
Yes, I still keep a notebook for jotting down the date I planted something, along with any info I know about it. I don't always put these details into my blog, so it's nice to keep the mundane records in a separate notebook for future reference.
ReplyDeleteI didn't start keeping a notebook until AFTER I started blogging... but all I've done so far is tape all of the plant tags on to white paper.
ReplyDeleteI think that garden journals would be much more successful and well-used if there was a good, fast way to incorporate pictures into them.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes sketch ideas and pictures in my paper journal, and I keep a set of colored pencils nearby to add dashes of color to the sketches, but there's something about having photographs right there... after all, would your sedum growing out of your rock be as effective as a simple line sketch?
Hi everyone - thanks for posting on this one. Taking paper and pen outside is something I do too, often seeing something that was forgotten while on the computer.
ReplyDeleteIn the journals, I use only the right side for entries, using the left page for postscripts, horticultural death notices, and taped-on tags or receipts.
Blackswamp girl, may technology soon give you that photo-taking electronic journal! The speed of sharing digital photos is still a rather heady experience for me - I have more than thirty years of garden photos, but only a couple of years are digital - the rest are film snapshots, printed and in albums.