Over the past long weekend, I attended the Garden Bloggers Fling 2016, in Minneapolis. This was my first Fling, and my plan was to beat everyone else to the punch by publishing blog posts at the end of each day. However, the browser on my computer screamed "Danger! Danger! Everyone can see you!" when I logged into the hotel wifi, which made me nervous about entering any site that required a password. Also, my SO traveled with me but went his merry way each day, so we spent the evenings filling each other in on our separate but equally fascinating experiences. I barely had time to download the SD card from my camera each night.
While few blog posts have appeared so far re the Fling, there are lots of photos on FB and Instagram. Oddly, I am not in any! The Fling requires a certain amount of mobility and a lot of stamina. I was okay on the former, sadly lacking on the latter, retreating to the bus early sometimes. An afternoon nap and a cup of coffee would have helped, but I simply could not nod off on the bus and no coffee or tea was to be found (my one complaint).
When I go on a garden tour, I look for ideas I can use in my own yard, and mostly take pictures to remind myself of what they are. For example, since I hate my current compost bin setup, I have a lot of pix of compost bins. Not only is it interesting to see what others photographed, many on the tour are excellent photographers, capturing not only what was there but the gestalt of the environments. My photos, such as they are, will show up on this blog to illustrate what I am doing or planning to do.
The next Garden Bloggers Fling is in the Washington, D.C. area, July 22 - 25, 2017. If you write a garden blog, I highly recommend attending a Fling (or two or ten!) Not only will you see a lot of interesting and enlightening gardens, public and private, you will meet a lot of friendly, welcoming, knowledgeable gardeners. Even when I was too tired to converse, I eavesdropped on many an interesting discussion and learned a lot.
2 comments:
I'm glad you came to the Fling, and I hope we had a chance to meet amid the busy schedule. Sadly, I'm terrible at remembering blog names. Do you have a personal photo to remind me if we met? :) Usually posts about the Fling trickle in through the fall, so keep an eye out for them on the Fling FB page.
You can always tell the gardeners on a garden tour. They're the ones who take pictures of the compost bins! Looking forward to having you share your posts. Remember to put them on the Fling group page on Facebook with the #GBFling2016 hashtag. That's a great way to search for everyone's posts online, too.
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