As the Garden Grows

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Macro Lavender blooms

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Lavender flowers - close up

The other day I took this macro photo of blooming lavender. I love the delicate blooms on each lavender spike.

I grow lavender and or Salvia in front of many of my rose plants. It’s a lovely combination. Many of the roses are a light pink or light yellow and the bluish purples of the lavender and Salvia compliment the roses quite nicely.

I especially love lavender. It doesn’t have much scent unless you walk up to it and disturb the plant or purposely crush some of the leaves in your hand, but once you do the scent fills the air for a while. Usually your hand has the scent on it was well.

I haven’t done this for a few years, but this year I think I’ll gather some of the lavender blooms and dry them to make my own potpourri. Have you made your own potpourri with flowers from your garden?

BTW

I’m sorry I missed last weeks GTS. My sites were down for three and a half days! It was terrible. I had to change web hosts because of the problems I was having with my old host.

I also wanted to let you know that I added another one of my blogs to the GTS. Visit My World and see what I’ve posted for my first GTS on that site.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.






The lily bud

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Lily flower bud

I took this photo of a tiger lily bud about two weeks ago.

If you’ve been reading this site for a while you might remember that the first day that I decided to try out my new SLR digital camera it was raining lightly. I literally have at least 200 photos of flowers covered in rain droplets! I hope you don’t hate wet flowers because I’m sure they’ll be featured regularly!

That reminds me I must get out in the garden and take more photos, hopefully when it’s not raining. Our Rose of Sharon tree is in full bloom, many of the roses are re-blooming and I don’t know how many other flowers are blooming but there’s lots. It’s time for another photo session.

Free blog community at Thoughts.com

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thoughts.jpg

I was asked to do a write up of Thoughts.com blogs – a 100% free online blog community.

Thoughts.com was given an appropriate name since it was created as a place for people to share their thoughts. It has since developed into a community of bloggers from all over the world.

As free blog communities go there are a few features that you’ll find on Thoughts.com that you won’t find elsewhere.

Unlike other blogging communities members of Thoughts.com can share videos, photos, music files and podcasts. Registered members can even rate other members videos, podcasts, blog posts and photos. In fact, if a member wanted to be able to make posts in the community blog sections of the site they would need to have been rated by other members and have attained a rating of 4 in order to post. So participation and interaction with other members is obviously encouraged.

I realize that many of the people that read my gardening blog have websites or blogs of their own, but not all of you do. Perhaps Thoughts.com might be a site to explore since you can upload your own photos and videos for others to see. If you were to sign up for a free membership you could use your blog as a journal and make entries about your plants or gardening methods.

The best feature of the site is of course that you can upload so many different types of multimedia all in one site. Other blog related communities or for that matter even personal blogs often need to host their photos, videos and podcasts on a variety of sites and then embed code into their blogs or posts in order to show others what they’ve created. Since you can store all your multimedia files right on thoughts.com I’m sure it’s easier to use photos and videos in your posts or point others to these files without having to leave the site.

Another great feature of Thoughts.com is the fact that they reward their top members with a free trip each year. This year they’ll be taking five of their most active members to Las Vegas. It’s an all expenses paid retreat. You can read all about it on the site but the winners will stay in a 4 star Las Vegas resort, have three free dinners and two free shows awarded to them, as well as having round trip airfare from anywhere in the continental United States.

Now that sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I can’t think of any other blog community that does anything like that. The best part is that all you have to do to win is be one of the most active on the site which is easy enough to do if you are uploading photos and videos, having them rating by members and rating other members items as well.

Check out Thoughts.com if you’d like to start your own free blog and socialize with others. Don’t forget to visit the community forums while you are there.

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