This was a good read. I've read about personal websites being digital gardens, and describe my own as "more of a functional vegetable patch than an ornamental floral garden". However, I've not seen bootstrapped side-projects compared to gardens, and like the analogy between gardening and farming, where gardening is more fun and less scalable than farming (but that being a good thing in this context). I wonder if a smallholding might be a more appropriate analogy for side-projects though, given gardens and personal websites are usually for personal use while smallholdings and side-projects are more likely to have a small commercial element.