Moving along in my garden book journey, the owner of the private garden that I contacted in hopes of getting her permission to take photographs said YES! With the journey now underway, a map is a necessity. I thought about buying a real map, sticking it to the wall and using thumb tacks for the proposed garden locations. Red thumb tacks could be replaced with a yellow one for a maybe, a green one for a yes. However, I usually work at my laptop in the dining room and didn't want a map as my decor. Not that my dining room has much of decor. Fortunately, Google Maps has an electronic answer. Here's a sample of what it looks like. My garden story map is actually much more cluttered than the one above. The real map has over 20 gardens.
With Google Maps, each pinpoint includes a link to the garden's website. This works well for the public gardens that have a site. The next step of creating my map was using the notes section for brainstorming. I categorized the garden spots by type of garden, focus, location, and photography schedule. I quickly found this works only for brainstorming since notes can't be edited. The brainstorming part will all end up on a spreadsheet.
Google Maps includes the ability to share a map. Links to the map were emailed to my husband and a friend, who both helped with prodding me along, for their input.
The next couple of steps of this project are just as scary as the first step. Contacting the owners or directors of the gardens to get permission to take photographs and include them in a book, is on the list. And, calling my writer friend to see if she's interested in being the author.
Now, I'm back to thinking "please say yes, please say yes." And, thinking what on earth am I doing? Why can't I just leave it at as a dream?
