Support for a Garden Tour forum?

Happy Birthday Don and do leave a message next time you visit our gardens on tour. I was looking forward to hearing from you but maybe you never made it all the way though the traveling diversion and on to our own hybridized daylilies. Try again. Have a dram on me.

Well, I do like your idea, Don, very much.
Yeah, Happy Birthday, again, hehe!

I would love a Garden Tour Forum. I am always curious on what and how other DG gardens/yards look like.

Actually, it would be kind of neat to do the virtual video tour too. Like they do online for real estate, hotels, etc. to see what you are getting. But guess that would be definitely for the computer gurus(sp?) to figure that out.

Great idea!
Carol

Happy Happy Birthday Don.

Zuzu. I was hoping for the ability to "next" the photos which also contained a narrative, like the Surf-Mexico site Don referred to.

Don, birthday-boy, here's a cyber- toast to many more happy birthdays.

Oh Robert, love that drink. LOL
Wished you guys could meet. Think you could have a hey day together!

43 replies, getting close!
Actually zuzu i do agree with you, let's not be coy, we do like to learn the whole package. To understand the planting is to understand the person behind it. Not only that, I think we come to a certain realisation ourselves as to why and how we got to the place we are at. We can examine ourselves under the spotlight as well as others! Not a bad thing. A little working together is what people used to do isn't it? We now seem to be islands surrounded by a sea of sharks. All like minded people should get together and beat off the sharks. They bite. Even swallow you up. You see, it does make us think! Keep the grey cells sparkling.

drdon, hiya, how's the day treating you? What if ....this doesn't go anywhere....is there a chance that the Garden Talk forum could be 'wangled' just a bit? i wonder, like 'Garden Talk & Guided Tours'. i haven't really checked it out yet, but never say die as they say.

Hi Don, and happy birthday again!

I have thought about a garden tour forum or ability myself, for quite some time. Something that would allow us to post the pictures w/commentary, without having response posts in the middle of it. I've thought the same thing that others have said here, that the Garden Diary is probably the best way to accomplish that, but start a thread on the forum woth a link to the tour. The feed-back, conversation would happen on that thread in the forum. But I also believe this should be a forum by itself. People posting announcements of their garden tours (w/the links) would be quickly lost on the the Garden Talk forum, and it would be quite laborious to wade through everyone's Diaries, trying to find the ones that have tours.

Hmmm... I thought I had come up with a solution, but it would have missed out on the whole feed-bak/converstaion part, so I'm still sticking with what several of us have thought of: the tour in our Diary, and a forum that we can post "invitaitons", if you will, to the tours, with the links. Then, let the talking begin!

Did any of that make sense?

Hope this can work, I also vote for you to be awarded this forum in honor of your birthday!

Hope it's been a great one,
hugs,
Mary

Wow!

I leave for a day and this thread goes back on topic......lol

Thanks to all of you for you kind wishes. I had a wonderful day with my wife. Just how it is supposed to be. I really am a bit choked up with all this and must tell you all that I hold you in very high regard. DG really is an amazing place.

best to you all,
don

Lest this suggestion be forgotten...

Looking at all the great photos on the contest makes me really wish for virtual tours, a place to find them, and a place to chat about them! (hint, hint)

I don't think that any of the other forums would lose their unique nature if we added a Garden Tour forum, and it would possibly enhance some of the other forums in that we would be able to see certain plants that may be featured in another forum because of flowers, size, or another spectacular behavior in the context of the garden where it is planted, thus showing the featured plant in a greater setting so that the tourist can see how a gardener treated that plant because of it's size, vining nature or how the color of a particular flower fits in with the other plants in that part of a greater space.

This proposed forum may, in fact, give way for more commentary about that particular plant or plants. I think seeing how plants are treated in this way may indeed give us a greater appreciation of a particular specimen due to its position in the garden we might be touring.

Case in point, why did drdon plant Salvia gesneriiflora so close to a pathway? It's a huge plant. If I was just showing this plant in bloom showing it's fabulous blooms one might ask why this placement made sense to me. If I were to show a wider "Tour" pic of this section of the garden it would make more sense in that in our particular climate this plant requires some shade during the heat of the day and was therefore planted in the partial shade of a Live Oak tree and needed to be placed nearer to the path that would otherwise be considered good practice. I can see the tour forum helping people understand such things intuitively upon seeing them and thus gaining some insights on how they might do a similar thing in their gardens with a similar or dissimilar plant. This would be where the tour forum could come in very handy from a cultural and educational perspective.

I tried a couple "threads" or whatever they're called on the Diary thing to see what it would be like for a garden tour. Putting in the "tour" and whatever dialog is appropriate is easy. The only questionable part would be, as has already been commented on, the inability to participate in two-way 'conversations'. Maybe there's a cyber-solution, but all the same I'd be happy enough to see DG'ers gardens via the Diary medium and hope that perhaps sometime an interactive fix might happen.

balvenie,

That's the beauty of the Garden Tour Forum. The diary allows a person to "conduct the tour", without interruption, and also with the ability to make changes - both to their comments and the pictures (you can't edit pics in a post of a regular forum thread.) Then, the interaction would happen on the threads in the forum.

For me, the reason we need the seperate forum (rather than just simply starting a thread in any forum, with a link to that particular diary) is twofold: 1) the threads would be quickly lost in other forums, as other posts for the other subjects of that forum come up, 2) someone wanting to find tours in general would have a heck of a time finding the appropriate threads (even if they were all on, say, Garden Talk.)

I was thinking that we can post links to our own tours on our member pages, but that still would not allow people to find the tours easily, and we would still have no interactive thread.

Don, I like your example of the question re placement of plants. Because of things I've learned from other gardeners, I've taken care to place fragrant roses where they are close enough to be touched and sniffed (not to be confused with scratch & sniff, lol), plants with fragrant foliage close enough to the path to be brushed against, to release the fragrance, and beautiful-but-with-killer-thorn roses where they can be admired from a safe distance. Until this time, I haven't really thought to mention that, and a garden tour would be an excellent way share those things!

happy belated, drdon, and many more. i would love to see this forum. i only found pirl's tour because she told me about it! i have seen several great tours (one other being drdon's and it certainly wouldn't hurt grouping them all together). count me as one more vote yea! debi

Love that wok.

Ulrich: which wok?

You do know what a wok is, don't you?

What a wabbit t'wos at a t'wee.

*GROAN*

*oy gevalt*....lol.

I'm wondering if Ulrich might me online at the local Chinese restaurant admiring their cookware in a public forum. Or, or course, it could be an abstract expression of his desire to stir fry this whole concept of a Garden Tour forum. Or it could be a rather feeble attempt at changing the lyrics of the "If I had a Hammer", song. While in Thailand many years ago, I asked a wandering monk where the closest bathroom might be. His answer was unforgettable; "The cricket runs quickly when under foot, yet rests often." Of course, I just wet myself trying to decipher the directions. I only learned later that they weren't directions to the bathroom at all. So in some keenly insightful mindset Ulrich might be telling us that the hand made carpets in Tabriz, Iran are of a superior weave than those made in Ispahan, and by osmosis telling us his favorite rose is Ispahan.

My head hurts,
don

I'm thrilled that you cleared it up for me. ??????????

Doc, lmao, you think too much!

I'm going to guess he was complimenting you on your fountain. Note please that I said "Guess", with Ulrich, one never knows.

Doc, I think you need to have a conversation with Jenna my 6 year old. When I was "helping" her with her homework, one of the questions was "How many months are in a year?" Jenna said "All of them". How can you argue with that?

mg

What was it Art Linkletter said about kids and the darndest things?...lol. Get that girl a pile of clay as soon as possible. You may have the next great sculptor on your hands. I did actually get the 'wok' joke, but felt a need to 'guild the lily' a bit...lol. In regard to your daughter's response to that question, I'm compelled to quote the late Richard Dawson and say "Good Answer".

If she'd have responded to that question with an outbust of "Chickens!" then I'd send a plane ticket immediately to meet that young lady. Why is it people always say that something tastes like chicken? If you gave a cannibal some chicken, do you think they'd say it tasted like human?

I wonder if inhaling horse poop fumes several hours a day causes brain damage.
don

Personally I liked the Far Side cartoon showing a few cannibals around a pot filled with water and a missionary with the mandatory fire below it.

One cannibal says to the other: Just how I like them: crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside.

Topic for pondering while on poop patrol Doc, and yeah, I know it isn't original, lol.

ahhh, meaninglessness...pure joy!

Carl Jung was searching for the wrong thing....lol.

The hokey pokey and it's raven-haired, cross-dressing sibling "The Time Warp" are two of my favorite kitschy little dances. "It's just a step to the left...."

hmmm, I wonder if Andy Rooney logs in to DG. He'd get some pretty good material here.

"And then a step to the right.
With your hands on your hips...."

You need to come to a hockey game here, lol, ever see people doing the "Chicken Dance" in parkas?

What do you think Carlin would think of us, lol? Or Gallager?

Doc, have you made the trip to "blu" yet?

This message was edited Dec 6, 2005 10:42 AM

I've been away with DD and just got back....

Belated Happy Birthday, drdon......and many more.

Hap

PS....I think that all of you a getting REAL near the edge.......hehehe

This message was edited Dec 6, 2005 1:00 PM

Perhaps they'll be saved if we get a Garden Tour Forum? (Notice, I have distanced myself from them, lol?)

lol, maggiemoo....okie back on topic.

I've added a little thing on my homepage in the diary section and it works very nicely. I think this may very well be the spot to post our garden tours and have comment and conversation in the proposed garden tour forum. The garden diary section of all of our homepages has this feature. We can take our time, post pics and explain what the heck we were thinking and then have our own thread so to speak over at the proposed forum without interruption from the 'tour' format. I've just added a few pics of a bench I built in a tab called Hacienda Garden. See what you guys think about this as the way we put up our tour pics and can have discussion in the GT forum. Btw, one should visit balvenie's diary as he showed me how to post there. It's really quite a neat feature and there is a privacy button so all those things you don't want seen won't be.

thanks maggiemoo,
hugs,
don

Now, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout! Great job both of you. Don, you've got a lot of work ahead of you - the wavy fence, the rose garden, La Sirena, etc, etc.... No telling what balvenie needs to let us in on.

I hadn't thought about it, but I guess one of my diary entires is a mini-tour, Roses I Have Known and Loved: http://davesgarden.com/journal/d/m/maggiemoo/

Wish we had a Garden Tour Forum to talk about all of these. sigh!
(Dave, nudge, nudge, wink, wink)

So solly, Pill, this lok:

Mmbb, try poking, it works better!

Eggflower soup anyone? lol

Bump!
Anyone?

lol maggiemoo,

I think the shine is wearing off. Although this may very well be a good idea, and I'm convinced it would be a lively forum, I think we're in a time when others out there are busy Kung Fu shopping for the Cabbage Patch serial killer video robot ipod Lego set.

Winter will be a good time for us all to post our garden tours in our diaries. Especially for those in the colder climates, imagine how wonderful it would be to walk around in people's gardens when it's been snowing for a long time and cabin fever is setting in! (Plus, winter is the time for planning.) I'm not giving up!

I've been reading, but not posting. I'll second what Maggie said - I'd love to stroll through someone else's garden while mine is frozen solid!

btw no Kung Fu shopping for the Cabbage Patch serial killer video robot ipod Lego set here - I but darn near everything online, and most of my shopping is done - Just really busy with year end at work!!!

Stacy

Not sure if I understand the garden tour concept, but when I moved here my kids (spread all over the country) wanted to know what I was doing. I started taking digital pictures and putting them into an album in Webshots. (Its free) I think it reassured them the old gal hadn't sunk into total depression and senility. LOL Anyway, here's the link... be patient, I've never done this before: http://community.webshots.com/myphotos?action=viewAllPhotos&albumID=327608237&security=rcsIJj

I think it would be a great idea for there to be a place for just this type of thing.. One day I will have a yard like Arlene's and I would love to be able to share it with everyone...

hiya Mitch, good to see you here! Your support for this means a lot and it could very well lead to a Garden Tour forum. thanks for pitching in.

hiya sstateham, thanks for chiming in. It means something to those of us interested in this.

hiya KatyMac,......no senility noticed. I've seen the link, thanks for that and lucidity is an illusion...lol

Sounds like it'd be a pleasurable forum when the winter winds blanket the prairie (and other seasons too).

Yes, and I guess we need to start by encouraging people to start virtual tours in their diaries. Once we have people doing that, we'll really have a need to get the forum started.... Right, Dave?
:-)

I've started using the Diary function for a garden tour, and it works great! The only thing is figuring out the sorting, but I'm plugging along. Starting with the back shade bed because I have to most shots of that.