Dear Readers,
If you’ve been used to receiving a daily gardening blog from the Laidback Gardener website (and, hopefully, enjoying that service), I may have to disappoint you.
I find myself in the hospital at the moment, and that is obviously going to slow down my output. Also, I have never really gotten into my health issues (I mean, it’s a gardening blog, after all, not the coffee corner at McDonald’s), but I suffer from a degenerative lung disease, pulmonary fibrosis. I was told 6 ½ years ago I had 1 to 2 years left to live.
I’ve beaten the odds so far. But I don’t expect I have much time left. I’m figuring months … but then, I’ve always been an optimist! Time will tell.
Not the End
That doesn’t mean this blog is coming to an end, though. I’m very passionate about it and want to keep it thriving. My son Mathieu has stepped in to help keep the blog going after my death, lining up people to help, finding additional sources of financing, etc. So, those annoying ads that break up the articles do serve a purpose: they keep the blog alive.
And your financial contributions, too, have been most helpful. Every little bit helps!
I’ve been preparing this blog largely on a volunteer basis, getting my income from other sources: writing articles for other publications, giving garden lectures, hosting TV and radio shows and leading garden tours. Most of these I’ve had to abandon bit by bit over the years (I had to resign from my final radio show last week, for example), but until this current health crisis, I was still writing for magazines, newspapers, other blogs, etc. I’ve decided to stop those as well to concentrate on this blog for the time I have left.
Expect a Less Responsive Editor
I’m also going to have to stop answering your gardening questions. I have done so generously over the years, but it’s extremely time-consuming. And, frankly, I just don’t have the energy to do it anymore. Mentally, I feel I’m still all there, but physically, I’m terribly diminished.
I’m so sorry about that, but remember that there is a search button on the Laidback Gardener blog. Click there, add a few terms about your question (for example “slugs marigold”), and click.
There’s a very good chance the answer was already there, just waiting for you. After all, there are over 2,800 articles on the Laidback Gardener website, the result of 8 years of daily blogging.
So, expect some interruptions while we work through this transition period. Already, writing a blog from a hospital bed with a fingertip oximeter on my ring finger, gumming up my formerly superior typing skills, has slowed me down considerably. I do hope to be back home soon (without that #%&*?% fingertip oximeter) and that will make things much easier.
And maybe if I stick religiously to just writing the blog, I’ll actually have some time off for myself!
The Blog Will Go On!
So, there might not be a daily blog as in the past, but we (as I now include my son and a new helper, Julie Boudreau, who’ll begin contributing articles over the coming weeks, to be part of the editorial team) do want to see several blogs a week. Just how many, only time will tell.
Long live the Laidback Gardener blog!
Larry Hodgson
Laidback Gardener