Residing in an apartment in Cairo, with relatively little space for gardening, I do believe that with little work and dedication, any space can be converted into a green haven, and hope this blog will encourage readers to start their own gardens. My house plants are a source of pleasure and relaxation, caring for and working them brings a lot of serenity and joy. With the planned vegetable garden, I will want to study the viability and sustainability of it as a (supplementary) healthy food source and recycling medium for domestic organic waste; as well as its replicability in any urban setting.
Having taken up blogging as a hobby only a little over three years ago now, I am starting this second blog mostly as a gardening journal. While I feel the need to stress the primarily personal nature of this blog, it has at the same time been designed with a view to making it a sharing and collaboration platform - with gardening specifically, and "green" in general, as the overarching subject: I hope my posts will serve as conversation starters for interested readers and friends who care to share their own experience, knowledge, or opinions; and that this blog will provide a medium for me to assimilate and synthesize various relevant resources and projects, as well as to publish the progress of my gardening and urban farming endeavor.
As for the structure and content, there are some features of this blog which I would like to highlight here:
Navigation Menu
The horizontal navigation menu contains six buttons to the main subjects of this blog, namely:
about: links to this here page; starting seeds: links to all posts discussing starting seeds and plant propagation techniques and methods; growing food: links to all posts about growing vegetables in a container garden; house plant care: links to all posts about my houseplants and how I care for them; more work: links to all posts under this broader category - there are a number of projects I am currenly involved in, which I think are relevant to the theme of this blog, and which I hope to be posting here; and finally, photo gallery: this self-explanatory button launches a gallery of photos of my plants - I hope I will be able to develop this gallery into a picture diary for each plant; this means I will have to take and publish good photos regularly - I am hoping on a weekly basis, a task I hope I will be able to live up to.
Sidebar
The sidebar allows the navigation of posts by specific labels: It features a label cloud containing all tags applied to posts; a drop-down label list of all plant and crop names posted here; as well as a monthly archive of published posts and a search box. There is a link to an ever expading glossary of terms; also check out the links under resources, where you will find links to pages containing all gardening how-to and plant troubleshooting guides respectively; I also list any books or websites I look up and use, as well as a presentation of how and where I get my gardening supplies. Titles and summaries for any notifications will also be accessible from the sidebar.
Footer
The footer provides added functionality: buttons link to this About page, allow readers to contact me via an email form, subscribe to this blog's feed, access a gardening calendar showing gardening tasks and the progress and milestones in my project, access all embedded downloadable documents, open a glossary page that is also accessible from the sidebar, and, finally, a button linking to all notifications.
Photography and Photos
I use no stock photos. All photos on this blog are of my actual garden and plants. I currently use a modest point-and-shoot camera that goes perfectly well with my modest skills, but I hope to be upgrading the camera soon.
All photo thumbnails pop up using the amazing (and thankfully free for non-commercial use) javascript by Highslide. Click on them for captions and/or notes, or simply to enjoy them in full size.
I realize that the upkeep of this blog entails more work than would be necessary to simply carrying out a small gardening and urban farming project; however, to me, having this platform to document and discuss progress achieved and problems faced is an integral part of my project; and I welcome any feedback, suggestions, advice, or enquiries, which you can post via the contact-me page. Make use of it!
So, now, down to work... here's to fresh starts!
There's much to be done during the winter:
I should start the seeds for the spring and work the soil.
And last, a dedication to my father, who taught me everything I know about plants.
P.S. I try to be very careful about editing my posts. And I really hate spelling mistakes. Please don't be shy about pointing out any needed corrections.
