3rd Birthday Mirtha-1

Our Garden Gang Presents...

With a little help

from my friends..

Mouseover Mirtha to see her favorite dish!

Dearest Gardeners:

We have some special treats to celebrate the third anniversary of Our Garden Gang. One of these is an interview with the one and only Auntie Canuck, and the members of the OGG management team - BygBrother, Debbie-the-Seed-Queen, Elliott's Mom (emom), Magisak, Ninjamom ("nmom"), and Wren - and their favorite dishes too! These people prove that you can indeed get by with a little help from your friends!

Mirtha Stuwort

Auntie Tells All

Mirtha: Congratulations on having such a successful site! You must be very proud.

Auntie: Yes I am! I heard you had a few questions for me old girl – fire away.

Mirtha: (old girl indeed!) Well first off I think our readers would want to know how OGG came to exist.

Auntie: I started Our Garden Gang in August 1999 to replace the old Home and Garden Forum run by MSN. It was such a corny name and the new format was such a mystery to unravel. Boy was it scary using the barbaric tools MSN had in those days – and I didn't know a thing about making web pages! But, we just kept growing and I gradually learned more, and who'd a thunk we'd still be here 3 years later!

Mirtha: Auntie to us loyal OGGers, it feels like you must have been born making web pages. It’s hard to believe you didn’t know how to just three years ago! But was it all smooth sailing along the way?

Auntie: Well, yes - mostly - if you don't count all the "upgrades" MSN did and the problems from them! Occasionally, there are spats and personality conflicts in the message boards, but most gardeners are not the petty sort.

Mirtha: OGG is renowned for being the funniest and friendliest garden forum around. How did that happen?

Auntie: We all seem to have a similar goofy sense of humor and love to help each other out. Some of the roughest times have been when we had huge influxes of members from promotions of OGG by MSN or other sites. Trying to get all the new members up to speed gets a bit hairy at times. Right now, we have about 6500 members, so we must be doing something right more often than not. If we can just figure out what that is, we can keep doing more of it!

Mouse-over Auntie
to see her at 3!

Mirtha: Well we are sure goofy all right! 6500 members? Wow Auntie that’s amazing. What direction would you like OGG to head?

Auntie: OGG has developed a collective soul or personality of it's own - or so it seems. Because of the interactive nature of the Message Boards on the MSN part of the site, and the superb assistant managers we have, we keep adding new things and broadening our scope. We all try to be responsive to member needs and ideas, and the only plans I have are to keep doing that!

Shameless Plugs!

Mirtha: What are some of the biggest changes and additions to OGG?

Auntie: We've started a growing collection of suppliers this past spring, in the hopes that plant and garden accessories sales through our links there to vendors will generate enough income to cover the costs of the site.

Mouse-over
Auntie of the Jungle!

Can I make a shameless plug for members to visit the suppliers from the links on our site to order their gardening goodies so we can get the little commissions? We're not as big as famous cousin's site, Martha Stewart. Fame must run in your family's genes my dear!

Mirtha: Shameless plug? Hey you are talking to the queen of shameless plugs! That runs in my family too! It’s ok by me Auntie. What should we look for at OGG in the coming months?

Auntie: Well, there's more of YOU to look forward to - the irrepressible Mirtha Stuwort! And more articles! Right now, Emom is working on a series of articles on preserving garden fruits and veggies. Curly has helped with the canning portion. August is our OGG Birthday celebration - we're now 3 years old, so I am planning some more candid member photo presentations. Last year's celebration of photos really helped cheer everyone up through the winter months.

Mirtha: Just like good food cheers us up too! And…speaking of good food, there are some favorite recipes of our OGG staff coming up on the next page! Click on the title to be taken to a culinary delight. Auntie - what's your favorite dish?

Auntie: Why, next to my famous (Note from Mirtha: she really means notorious) garlic cake with jalapeno icing, it's that unbeatably crispy Hungarian Fried Chicken!

Mirtha: Thank you Auntie for taking the time to answer our questions…everything we wanted to know but were afraid to ask! Want to know more about your favorite OGG staffer?

Read On!

BygBrother - oh so watchable
DebbieTheSeedQueen - alter ego?
Elliott's Mom - has something to say
Magisak - dances with words
Ninjamom - she's here and dear
Wren - such a tweetie

See the whole gang!

Happy 3rd Anniversary OGG!

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