I consider myself to be an “aspirationally technical person”, in that I don’t have a vast technical knowledge base to draw from, but I’d like to. This is doubly the case when it comes to building this website. I know about as much HTML as I did in the ’90s, which is not much. But I have ideas. And I have the internet to help. And that’s gotten me this far, so something must be working.
As I move now into the phase of actually building out the digital garden structure, I find myself quickly running into some stumbling blocks. A lot of this comes from the examples that I’ve been looking at, which are all fantastic, but which are also beyond the reach of my abilities to build. Right now, at least.
What’s a fledgling digital gardener to do when you don’t have the tools and skills you see others using and you think you might need? Well, for me, I just use the tools I have. I work with what I’ve got.
I’m going into this with a hope, though. A plan, even. Or the beginnings of a potential plan. Part of a digital garden’s very nature is that it is always a work in progress. So that’s very much what mine will be. Not only will the contents of the garden change over time, but I hope that the structure of the garden itself will evolve as I pick up new skills and gather better tools.
I’m essentially allowing myself to be the kid planting flowers in a dirt patch in the back yard. And I’ll hope to someday have a lovely greenhouse all to myself, with raised beds and proper irrigation and all the fancy bells and whistles.
There are still a few more basic decisions I need to make regarding how and where I’ll be putting up the garden. But again my ultimate choices will be driven largely by what I’ll be able to pull off right now.
So wish me luck over the next couple of days as I bang around under the hood and hope I build more than I break. And as always, feel free to send any tips or suggestions my way. New gardeners love advice from greener thumbs!