If you tied to e-mail me lately you might have found a message "mail box full". I ignored, this since I had sent messages read to the trash bin. Well apparently I needed to empty the trash bin! Thanks to those who took the time to call and let me know. I try to monitor people who have linked to me, and return the favor by linking back to them via my blogroll. Its gotten hard to keep up these days, as there are so many new blogs out there! My only criteria for linking to another web site via my blogroll is a shared mutual interest. Mostly its garden related, but it could be just about anything. If you have linked to my blog and I missed it shoot me an e-mail and I'll be sure to link back to you. Quality links are what makes the blog world go round!

Want to thank Zoey Farms who took the time to attend our Hyper-tufa pot making workshop. It was the first time they had visited and it was a result of our web page and blog. Yea, it works. Zoe farms is one of our growing community of vegetable farmers in the area. They have been around for a few years and sell their vegetables through a subscription service. We are seeing an increase in interest in growing your own vegetables as well as selling the excess or all of it at farmers markets or through a subscription service. I found out about them because they had linked to my site mentioning they were going to visit. I try to keep my eyes open for people talking about us. I have Google alerts set up for our names, business name, etc. When I saw their link I was able to visit with them before even meeting them in person. This is what all small business needs to do. You can start a blog for nothing but the time it takes to nurture it.

We in the blog world sometimes expect things to happen over night. That's seems to be the nature of the world today. We want it now. Some things take time though and I believe that we have only started to see the effects of all this blogging. To those that said blogging was not something business needed to think about, your wrong! It empowers not only the customer, but connects businesses to the customer as well as other business. I find talking with other garden centers around the world empowering. Its amazing how small garden centers in all different places are facing the same concerns and possibilities. I find it comforting that a garden center in England has many of the same issues we have here. It means we are not alone, and through collaboration can come to solutions that benefit us both.

I hope I am right, but the era of small personalized business may be coming back. Right when we thought that the world was going to be dominated by mega-chains that crush the little guy, the little guy gets a voice! The really neat thing is that people are starting to listen and respond. I don't need a huge percentage of the gardening public to shop our store. What I need is a smaller, more passionate group of people that will respond to our message and spread the word. When small business will really start to reap the rewards of keeping up the conversation is when the customer starts to spread the word. And when that customer has a blog of their own, look out!