New Beginnings

I have been a bad blogger this year. I admit it. But writing two books in a year's time and getting the travel business off the ground has taken a considerable amount of my time and has turned my attention, for most of the year, elsewhere. And so, I'm making at least one New Year's resolution before New Year's even arrives and that is to get the blog back up and fully running again.  In fact, I have a couple of new things to share and hope you'll continue following along as I gear up and jump headlong into 2014.

To start, my new book, Plant This Instead! (Click the link) will hit the shelves sometime in February.

Plant This Instead! focuses on making wiser plant choices, offering new, improved and more desirable varieties for today's landscapes and gardens.  No more Bradford pears!  It also compares some of the "new and improved" varieties (Are they, really?) with some of their older, tried-and-true predecessors. I hope you'll take a look at the book on pre-sale now at Amazon or in your local bookstores once it does hit the shelves in February.

I will also be writing again this year for Tennessee Gardener magazine.  I will be doing fewer regional features (the ones that appear in multiple states), but will begin writing a regular monthly article about the happenings here in my home garden, Wits' End, each month in Tennessee Gardener.  In fact, the title of the new column will be "The View From Wits' End" and each month I'll relate stories from the garden, feature plants blooming during that month, talk about my successes and failures and much more.  To accompany the new column, I will also be creating and writing a second blog (in addition to this one and with the same name, "The View From Wits' End", as the magazine column) for Tennessee Gardener that will be featured on their website www.tennesseegardener.com   This will give me the opportunity to communicate with everyone on a more personal and detailed level in between monthly magazine articles and feature things from the garden that there just aren't room for in the magazine.

Finally, we are really gearing up for a year of travel.  In October, we announced a trip that will benefit the television show, Volunteer Gardener, that I co-host and that runs weekly on Nashville Public Television. We are actively looking for travelers to fill those seats and I would be most grateful if you would help spread the word!  The itinerary, with pricing and all of the details, can be downloaded from my website www.troybmarden.com (Click the link) or you can email me at tbmgardens@gmail.com and I can send an itinerary via email.  You may also call the number in the image, above, but honestly, it just takes you to a voice mailbox and you will reach me faster via the email address I just gave you.  We have until February 1 to sell this trip out and really need to do that in order to raise as much money as possible for Volunteer Gardener!

We'll have new travel announcements for later in the year coming very soon, too, so stay tuned!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season with family and friends and I'll look forward to seeing you here regularly from now on!  Merry Christmas!