Garden 52

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

The other day I realized that I am in a garden everyday during the growing season, enjoying some pretty fantastic things that never show up on this site. It’s not uncommon for me to visit a stunning garden and take hundreds of photos that I never get around to posting here. I’m still sitting on photos from Cuba I took 2 winters ago, a trip to the Highline in New York City last October, and countless other gems. Let’s not talk about the folders and folders and stacks of film from my month-long trip to the Caribbean.

Yikes.

But my recent acquisition of an iphone has made it so much easier for me (albeit with less clarity) to grab a quick snap of something inspiring and share it online in real time, or very near real time. I figured if I made a project that forced me to stop what I am doing once a day, take a photo, and then post it online, I might have a nice collection at the end of the year.

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

Unfortunately, I suspect that capturing an interesting garden image daily might get difficult during the growing season so I’ve decided to name the project Garden 52. That way I am only pushed to come up with one photo a week during the off season. I think we’d all grow bored looking at dim and slightly blurry photos of my houseplants day after day come December.

garden52_3.jpg

I have also started a group on Flickr where members can take part and post their own daily/weekly garden updates.

Every other Friday I will update here with some highlights from the group.

Won’t you join us?

Gayla Trail
Gayla is a writer, photographer, and former graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the author, photographer, and designer of best-selling books on gardening, cooking, and preserving.

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12 thoughts on “Garden 52

  1. I love this project. I will definitely join in on the festivities, although not with a cell phone (because I don’t have one… I’m such a Luddite in some ways).

  2. Cellphones are not required. That’s just the only way I’ll ever do it.

    I consider my cellphone more of a tiny computer than a phone. Or a pocket camera.

  3. I’ve more then once thought about getting a cellphone just for the photo abilities, then never giving out my number so nobody calls me on it. Because, dammit, I don’t want people being able to get a hold of me all the time!

  4. Kel – that’s what I do, I always have it with me, and use it for email and iphone photos – but when people call me I rarely answer and always look at the caller ID annoyed like “why are you calling me on my camera??”.

  5. LOL Meighan! I laughed so hard at that “why are you calling me on my camera?”

    I JUST got a cellphone after not having one for a couple of years. We had a provider that locked us into a very painful contract and I was totally anathema to getting into that again. Cellphones are brutally expensive in Canada and no providers have “vanilla phones” that are just phones, that’s it, nothing fancy. There’s one provider now that doesn’t require a contract so that’s who I went with. I’ve had it for a week and have had no reason to use it yet.

    Kelly, I’m such a luddite too. Bluetooth users look completely mental to me like they’re crazy people on street corners talking to themselves and Duane has explained to me what those little plug-in keeps everything devices are for the computer but I always forget and keep asking. I’d never want something that could hold the entire contents of my life and is so small and so easy to lose.

  6. Gayla – this is such a great idea! I’m always taking pictures with my iPhone and there’s only so many you can post to twitter without annoying people.

    I’m looking forward to participating.

    Gina

  7. I’d love to join the group, too. I posted a weekly update on my blog this morning (before I saw your post) but this is a faster & easier way to record the garden’s progress.

    And to be honest, the only reason I’m considering an iPhone is for the camera feature.

  8. Sounds like a bunch of us are most interested in cellphones for the camera. I hear the new one has a great camera. Drat!

  9. I actually have an old deactivated cellphone (which, coincidentally Gayla, has a photo of your book in the front shop window of an indie book store here in town). I might actually break down and get it reactivated just for the photos because it doesn’t have bluetooth and I can’t get said photos OFF the cellphone without it hooked up. Although the photographer in me goes “damn, it’s an old phone and the camera isn’t that great!”.

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