Thanks to Bloggers

Having Andrea from Meanderingthemaze comment on my blog with the Liebster Award made me start to think about how all this reading started.

I had been writing a garden blog for over a year before reading blogs, but it wasn't really intended as a blog; rather it was just an easier way to keep a gardening journal --I could add pictures, and type, rather than using a paper journal. Somehow I got started reading blogs that had to do with food: School lunches, the politics of food and big agri-business. But after reading the food blogs, it occurred to me that there must be other gardeners writing blogs, and I searched for some in my general part of the country. At the same time, one of the school food blogs I was reading pointed me toward a now-extinct blog by Kathy, who currently writes saltycrunchybitterfresh. I found her blog fun to read, and then I started to explore the blogs of people who commented on her blog, which I think lead me to Jen on the Edge.  Comments on her blog lead me to Green Girl's blog, and then off to even more blogs. It's sort of an exponential explosion. In this explosion I connected with a few other bloggers, like the Common Household Mom, Prairie Rose's Garden, 21st Century Housewife, Spinning My Plates, and Suburban Matron, although I can't necessarily remember how the connections happened. I now have a long list of blogs in my Google Reader, some who write almost every day, some like me, who write intermittently. (Most of the blogs I read don't have hundreds of commenters. While I have come across a few really good blogs like that, I find that experience less personal --it doesn't seem worthwhile to be the 123rd comment on a blog, and I don't tend to return to those blogs as often.)

One of the great things about this exponential growth is that it has lead me to discover some really excellent writers. Bloggers who not only have interesting things to say, but write about them in ways that make me laugh, or touch me in some other way. How cool that there are so many people out in the world who enjoy writing as an art form, even if they are not pursuing any formal publication. It seems to me that blogging has something in common with the long letters people used to write almost daily about the course of their lives, before faster forms of communication became cheaper and more prevalent. Letters weren't just written to notify distant friends and relations of important events; they were mostly written to share small daily aspects of the writer's life and sometimes trivial musings. And some of them were worth preserving because of the skill of the writer.

In addition to discovering clever writers, I've also found that connecting with bloggers is sort of like having neighbors. I don't actually have any neighbors, something I've always missed out here in the boonies. Consistently reading certain blogs is like having casual conversations over coffee in the afternoon, or reading daily letters from more distant friends.

I really love reading you guys. I do most of my on-campus work in the mornings, and look forward to reading through my favorite blogs on the couch in the afternoon with a cup of coffee.

Thanks for keeping me company :-)