A Big Thank-you, Readers, for our Mouse&Trowel Awards

Our friend Colleen has announced the winners and we're thrilled!  Awards to GardenRant for Best Writing, Most Innovation, and Blog of the Year are pretty damn exciting, speaking for this Ranter. 

Congratulations to the excellent Pam Penick at Digging, who makes us all want to be Austinites.  She won for Design, Photography, and overall excellence in all of North America.  Carol at May Dreams Gardens is everybody's favorite gardenblogger not just for her charms but also for her innovative community-building ventures, like the Gardenbloggers Book Club.  Our favorite Dutch gardener - Yolanda at Bliss - got some deserved credit.  And we're already on record as big fans of Heather at Wiggly Wigglers and Tom at Soul of the Garden.  So this is fun!!

Now it's time for a big shout-out to Colleen for having a great idea and carrying it out professionally and with a wonderful spirit.  So to answer her question - yes, let's do it again next year.  The awards have already generated excitement about the online gardening world and that'll only increase as more people tune in to the motherlode of creativity that's finding expression here on the Internet.   Writing and photography and great web design - oh, my.

And great conversation, too.  Seriously, some of the best minds out there on any given topic.  (Somebody give me a reality check because that's how impressed I am by our commenters.)

And how about that GardenRant?  I think it works because four people who were already having a ball gardenblogging individually are having even more fun creating this hotbed of irreverance, cheekiness, outrage and plant lust.  It works because we're all addicted to playing with plants and dirt.  And it works because - and I'm going to go soft on you here - we're all about supporting each other. 

Comments

[Pam/Digging]

Congratulations, Susan, Elizabeth, Michele, and Amy. Your Mousies are well-deserved, and I'm already looking forward to seeing how you're possibly going to top yourselves next year.

[Ellis Hollow]

Congrats. You are the hub of this community. Keep up the good work.

[Amy Stewart]

Oh, baby. We've got some plans. Stay tuned.

[sandy]

Congrats Garden Rant! You go girls!

[Dawn]

Well done! You deserve the kudos!

Regards,
Dawn

[Carol]

Congrats on the Mousies and for the kind words. I'm looking forward to finding out about your new plans!

[Yolanda Elizabet]

Hi hotbed babes of irreverance, cheekiness, outrage and plant lust at GardenRant. :-)

Well done on winning 3 Mousies. Many garden bloggers envy you, my cats envy you.

Cheerio from your favorite Dutch garden blogger. ;-p

[Marte]

Congratulations! Well deserved recognition.

[Colleen]

Congrats, Ranters :-)

I can't wait to see what you ladies have in store for us. Here's to another great year of Ranting.

[layanee]

Congratulations! Always interesting, always provocative, always fun! I look forward, daily, to your posts!

[Ed Bruske]

Well deserved, all of you...The rantier the better.

[carolyngail]

Belated congrats! I'm a great fan of Garden Rant and have you listed on my blogroll. Please include me on yours.