|
We Are: Convinced that gardening MATTERS. Bored with perfect magazine
gardens. In love with real, rambling,
chaotic, dirty, bug-ridden gardens. Suspicious of the “horticultural
industry.” Delighted by people with a passion for plants. Appalled by chemical warfare in the garden. Turned off by any activities
that involve “landscaping” with “plant materials.” Flabbergasted at the idea of a “no
maintenance garden.” Gardening our asses off. Having a hell of a lot of fun. |
Change is good
If you're in Albuquerque on Saturday, I hope you'll stop by Bookworks at 3 pm and say hello. It is great fun to meet GardenRant readers on the road. You're all so much better-looking in person than you are in the comments.
by Susan
Need more proof that the Mouse&Trowel Awards rock? They brought some much-deserved attention to a
very ambitious new site, My Folia, a finalist for Website of the Year (along with Blotanical and You Grow Girl). Here's what a little surfing on the site revealed:
MAPS
You can find gardens near you or in the same zone in other countries (oh yeah, this is global). Near me somewhere in DC is "Anarchist Melon Patch's Plot 1," with no more information than that, and I'm intrigued as hell. (Anarchist, do I know you?) Then I spy "Leafy Green Community Garden" which is very close to me and where I know actual gardeners! Though here again I want to know more, especially who wrote the garden's profile, including the subtle ratting on garden members for using Miracle Gro despite the garden's organic-only rules. (Good for you!) And I'm wondering if garden profiles on My Folia are the easy online presence we've been looking for to organize and publicize DC's community gardens.
PLANT FILES
Find out who's growing or propagating each plant and where. Read
progress journal entries. Learn the most popular varieties. Read or
contribute to a Wiki for each plant. See who wants each plant and who
has extras; easily arrange a swap. Plant geeks will think they've died and gone to that great garden in the sky.
MY OWN PLOT ON MY FOLIA
Reluctant social networker that I am, I dove in and created a page on this site because it seems like a cool way to keep garden records - much cooler and easier than using my tattered spiral notebook. If other "Folians" are interested in, say, 'Tardiva' hydrangea, they'll see that I grow it and read the results (assuming I get around to listing all my plants.)
If you don't want to sign up and create your own page you can still participate in almost everything here (except for the chat rooms), so it's not one of those annoying gated website communities.
GROUPS
It's got 'em - by location, by plant, by garden type, and even one for composting. Ever scheming, my first thought was that community gardeners everywhere can brainstorm about best practices.
ALTERNATIVE/COMPLEMENT TO BLOGS
The journals here are a quick and dirty alternative to full-scale blogging, and that's a good thing. But what about us bloggers - do we need to duplicate everywhere here? (Because that is SO not going to happen.) No, it seems we can just link to our blogs and use the other features here. So if see a comment on GardenRant by Spidra, I can go to her page on My Folia to learn all about her gardens.
GLOBAL REACH/LOCAL INFO
Okay, I'm usually lobbying for regional and local gardening information, but this site seems to make that happen while bringing together gardeners from around the world - to date, 1,110 Folians in 30 countries. And it manages to avoid the deathly corporate look and feel of so many large websites. That's because it's the love child of a very real couple - Nic and Nath, web developers and gardeners in England.
ONE CAVEAT
Don't take the tour - it frustrated me no end. Just start surfing. Other than that, the site functions remarkably well for all its complex functionality.
BACK TO THOSE MOUSE&TROWEL AWARDS
As for My Folia's competitors for the award, I'm also impressed by Stuart Robinson's Blotanical, which takes a very different approach but also is social networking for gardeners, more tied into the blogging community. Both sites are incredibly ambitious and I want them to succeed! You Grow Girl is unfamiliar to me. Readers, please weigh in.
And have you voted yet? You have until May 13.
Anybody going to the show in LA? I'll be there Sunday.
Ever since the return from Austin, I’ve been twittering with many of the garden bloggers I met there and some I didn’t. Twitter.com offers another social networking opportunity—kind of an easy one, in my opinion. You sign up and then you can write little mini-posts: under 140 characters. Your friends who also twitter find you and they click on you to follow your “tweats.” You find and follow theirs as well and you end up with a page of updates from online pals.
It’s blogging when you don’t have time to blog and it’s kind of fun. I have a weird mix of Buffalo bloggers and garden bloggers whom I follow and who see my Twitter posts, which is interesting, because of course the Buffalo twittering is completely different, and rarely about gardening.
You know, sometimes you’re just not up to sitting down with your reader and reading 20-30 posts. Twitter offers an alternative for such occasions, and it's possible to twitter from a variety of portable devices. Does it serve a useful purpose? Sure, if you like to maintain a group of online buddies, especially when you're on the go. Is it kind of a minimal, maybe even shallow way of doing that? I suppose it could be viewed that way, so, for now, I use twitter strictly as an accessory to—not substitute for—blogging.
by Susan
A national nonprofit compiles worthy recipients, presents them to potential donors, the donors choose, and the nonprofit bundles the contributions. Sounds like Emily's List, doesn't it, compiling lists of pro-choice female candidates with a shot at winning? But this time it's teachers in low-income communities submitting proposals for worthy projects that potential donors can choose.
And remember last fall when GardenRant and thousands of other bloggers joined the Donors Choose Blogger Challenge to help raise money for the cause? There were plenty of great school garden projects and I chose one in the GardenRant Challenge and a schoolyard greening project right here in Washington, D.C.
Well, I recently learned that Donors Choose takes a page from another successful fund-raising tactic - the thank-you letters sent by Save the Children recipients - when I got a nice package in the mail containing:
And look what else is new from Donors Choose: Stephen Colbert's Democralypse Challenge. He's urging viewers to show their support for Clinton or Obama in the Pennsylvania primary by donating in the name of their favorite candidate to projects in Pennsylvania schools. And of course it's working - about $107,000 as of last week*, 86 percent of it in Obama's name. Apparently his first foray into fund-raising - in his home state of South Carolina - resulted in donations of $66,000 to schools there.
The Colbert Report will be broadcast from Philadelphia this week, April 14-17, so you'll hear lots more about the Democraylpse Challenge. Here's a clip of Stephen promoting it and showing off the art work that he received from kids in the donor schools.
*For the life of me I can't find the current results. I wonder if the results were SO lopsided they decided to take them down. Hmm.
For a pictorial overview of the Austin bloggers' meet-up, you could check here. Click on the first photo and click "next" to scroll through.
For better close-ups of plants and closer attention to botanical matters in general, check Linda/Herself's Houston Garden images of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and James David's garden.
Susan/Garden Rant, Suzanne/Vert, Vicki/Playin’ Outside, Gail/Clay and Limestone
Indeed, a few of the bloggers are still in Austin with a half-day or even full day of activities planned for Sunday. I, however, am on my way back to Buffalo.
Last night, we had our final dinner for the Spring Fling event at the County Line BBQ, where we were served huge platters of charred flesh (I happen to like charred flesh), as well as some rather good coleslaw and potato salad. The brisket was also superior. We celebrated Kathy/ColdClimateGardening’s “significant birthday” and Pam and Melissa handed out a slew of door prizes. I won some pretty tulip-shaped ceramic candlesticks. Prior to that, we happy houred at Pam’s delightful home/garden, which is everything you thought it would be from viewing it on her blog. I think I had the front yard smaller and the back yard bigger in my imaginings of it. Below you can see the front yard (a composite view).
We drank “Mexican martinis,” which are pretty much margaritas with some kind of mix added. It’s totally an Austin thing and I believe Pam will be posting the recipe. She’s holding one below.
Sorry to say, I missed two blogging discussions led by Carol/May Dreams Gardens and Kathy; Susan and I had discussed enough blog business for the day (secret Garden Rant schemes). We did informally chat to a few bloggers in the back yard and I think we were interviewed by someone for the Austin Statesman. I could be wrong about that. Now, here’s an interesting point: one of the guests mentioned that though she liked the topics we Ranters brought up, she found our manifesto off-putting. I think that was as close as any conversation (that I heard) got to critiquing each other’s blogs. To be honest, I suspect most of the bloggers were overwhelmed by meeting so many people whose blogs they had never read. I know I am returning to Buffalo resolved to start reading at least ten blogs I’ve never looked at before. But now I have a post-Mexican martini face to accompany the experience. I look forward to it.
There will be a link to better images from this trip in a day to so.
Zanthan Gardens
On this balmy Austin afternoon, a faction of the Spring Flingers have gathered at Melissa’s garden for a brief respite. We’ve toured the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center:
We listened to a great talk by Tom Spencer/Soul of the Garden. We shopped at the Natural Gardener:
We toured a fabulous private garden—James David’s. He is an award-winning landscape designer and you can see why:
The problem? There’s nothing to rant about! My feet hurt just a bit, and I probably should not have bought a rather expensive San Diego Hat Co. chapeau at the garden store, but truth is, these events have been practically perfectly organized by our Austin hosts.
So far the observation that rises to the top amidst a whirl of impressions is how people’s personalities really are not like their blogs. And that, at least at this time of year, Texas seems like the ideal place to garden.
There is really not much to blog about yet in terms of the Austin Spring Fling, but what the hell, I’m isolated in a hotel to the north of much of the group, and it’s still early so here goes.
The first thing you learn about Austin is that it’s surrounded by incredibly verdant countryside: trees, lakes, little streams, and even hills. This is one of the aspects that makes Austin so different from other parts of Texas. The second thing you learn is there are two kinds of food: tex-mex and barbecue. My cabby took me by one taco place after another. “How can anyone eat that many tacos, so often” I’m thinking. Yeah, I’m sure there are lots of other types of food in Austin.
As it happens, our first meal of the get-together was tex-mex at a Matt's El Rancho, a wonderful place that also served excellent Patron margaritas (I can never remember the other types of tequila I like, so I fall back).
Amazingly, the bloggers took up two very long tables. I did not even begin to have an opportunity to even say hi to most of them. Our little group at the end was delightful though: the team from Cobrahead : Annaliese Valdes and Geoff Valdes; Mary Ann Newcomer/Idaho Gardener; and Dee Nash/Red Dirt Ramblings (Oklahoma). There was also Geoff’s lovely fiancée Raemelle (whose full name does not appear on the printed list). Raemelle and Geoff are shown above.
So many of these gardeners write for magazines, work as garden designers, make garden products (Cobrahead), or otherwise surpass me in horticultural chops. I feel bemused to be among them. In a good way.
As Susan posted a while back, she and I have plans to attend this weekend’s Garden Bloggers' Spring Fling in Austin, generously organized by Pam/Digging, MSS/Zanthan Gardens, and other Austin garden bloggers.
Thanks I suppose to my snobby determination to stay in a B&B or inn rather than a chain, our accommodation plans have had their ups and downs, one place fell through, and now we’re winding up in a chain-ish place farther away than we should be from most of the events. (The hapless Susan fell victim to my caprices, I’m sorry to say.) But at least we have a place and it has wi-fi. So we hope to blog at the end of each day—Friday and Saturday, with a few photos, and then maybe we’ll have some posts when we return to our respective homes. Stay tuned!
I must say Austin looks particularly inviting now. Supposed to be 79 on Saturday and the bluebells are out. We’ll be reporting on our visit to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center and some fabulous private gardens in Austin, as well as—well, who knows? We’ll try not to get into too much trouble.
