Introduction - why I blog

My work is fascinating.  I catalog library books for the second (or perhaps, third) largest school district in my State.  55 librarians send me the items they purchase for their libraries.  I love looking at all those books ( DVDs, audiobooks, pieces of equipment, etc.) and entering the information in our library system.  I love the symmetry of organizing the information and putting it in the right places in a MARC record.  I love troubleshooting the library system, finding errors and correcting them, all with the overarching goal of making it easy for students and staff to find the library resources they need in order to succeed. 

However, all this fascinating work is done sitting down, in front of a computer (with two monitors).  I sit, researching and typing, for almost 8 hours per day. My exercise is literally turning my head from screen to screen and walking a cart full of books to my coworker a couple times per day.

I realized that fitness is going to be necessary, if I wish to enjoy my grandchildren, assuming there will be some  So, I wracked my brain for exercise ideas.  I needed something that would require walking, but I needed a purpose, an interesting purpose.  Walking for the sake of walking is just plain boring, especially walking-in-place on a gym machine. 

My new exercise purpose: collecting gardens.  I research and locate interesting public gardens.  There is a great deal of fun, as it happens, in finding gardens; driving to them, walking all over them, taking photographs, smelling the perfume of the blooms and growing things, and enjoying the spectrum of colors. 

Currently, I am collecting gardens of the Pacific Northwest (U.S. and Canada, since it is so close). When the time is right, I plan to expand my collection to gardens much farther afield.

Here you will see photographs of the many gardens I visit and my observations of each.