One year blog anniversary

I finally made it to one year! I wouldn't trade this past years experience for anything.

Through blogging this past year I have come to understand so much more about gardening than I could from just reading about it.

Reading about gardening helps you to ‘know of’ generalities about gardening, such as,

terms like annual and perennial,

the difference between a bulb and a bareroot,

Fall is the best time for planting,

soil has more impact on plant health than just watering and fertilizing,

not all insects are pests.

Actually getting into the garden and working it shows how things interact and helps you to learn such things as

feeding the soil really is more beneficial than just feeding the plants,

mixing flowers with vegetables and herbs attracts beneficial insects to help you keep plants healthy,

growing a variety of shrubs, trees, grasses, and flowers helps support a greater variety of wildlife, and why that is important,

losing a portion of your crop to insect damage is so much healthier than trying to keep everything by destroying every insect you see and eventually ourselves,

being a part of nature by working with it rather than just watching it go on around you is healthier for your body, mind and soul.

Writing about gardening helps you focus your intellect in order to understand why we are dependent on a variety of wildlife just as they are dependent on us. And how much impact our little garden has on the world.

Gardening can’t help but make everyone a better environmentalist. It illustrates how using chemicals to keep a ‘greener’ lawn or grow ‘bigger’ tomatoes really does more harm than good, just like we have been told for years.

My fellow blogging gardeners have presented so many wonderful new tricks and ideas to help rookies like myself succeed. I realize after just one year of perennial gardening that I had been previously only working at gardening and now, after being able to create some beauty of my own, I realize that I can indeed begin to call myself a gardener, still a novice, but a gardener just the same.

This yearlong experience has made me hungrier than ever to learn more of this fascinating lifestyle. I thank each and every one of you for helping to make this possible. Hopefully, this blog will be viewed as a source of inspiration and knowledge so that I can do my part to help someone else.

Happy Birthday Utah Valley Gardens from a blogging neophyte who deeply appreciates being a part of this great and wondrous world of gardening and blogging.