
I am pleased as punch to have been given the Dragon Loyalty Award by the author of a new blog I recently discovered. The Bulging Buttons blog is a discovery I made while participating in the National Blog Posting Month at Blogher.com. As a fat activist since age 21, I like her style and her slogan: Not Bad for a Fat Girl.
The rules for acceptance:
“The Dragon’s Loyalty Award is an award for the loyal fan/commenter, whether the recipient is a fellow blogger or just someone who follows and comments regularly”.
[Rules lifted straight from Bulging Buttons]: There are some rules that one must follow in order to fully accept the award and they are as follows:
1.Firstly, display the Award on your site (see Award page or sidebar!) You earned it and you deserve it! [Done, and I had to figure out how to add images to the sidebar. Thus I was able to add the Liebster Award which was given to me by Future World some time ago!]
2. Link back to the person who gave you the award in your acceptance post; [Done!]
3. Nominate 15 well-deserving bloggers for the Award and let them know the wonderful news by sending them a message on their site;
4. List 7 interesting facts about yourself
Rules one and two were easy. Well, relatively easy, once I found a tutorial about adding images.
Rule 3: I don’t think I even have 15 commenters, so will include some blogs that I admire in order to get up to the count of 15. Three of my regular commenters, Pamela of Back Alley Gardens in Gearhart, Judy (four doors down from me), and Sheila of New Leaf Plants and Pottery in Shedd, Oregon, do not have blogs of their own. So to those dear readers, I can simply offer the reward without a place for them to post it. As for bloggers:
1. My favourite blogger, Mr. Tootlepedal, comments regularly. However, he has plenty to write about his fascinating and well photographed daily life, so I will give him the award but exempt him from the rules. His blog inspired me to write daily, and to believe that the quotidian details of life in a particular place are well worth reading, and to not be afraid to post too many photographs.
2. Another favourite blog of mine is from my good friend since age 12, Montana Mary. Although her Yummy Montana blog is not enough to make me want to move to a landlocked state, I enjoy reading her droll humour about an environment so very different from mine. Her other blog, Yummy Northwest, has lots of recipes and food articles.
3. I get frequent and much appreciated comments from Cathy of Cathy and Chucky, a blog from Australia which is indeed the cat’s pajamas with homey posts about gardening and food.
4. Another daily blogger is Loren Williams, who hails originally from this part of the world.. He is absent from blogging while going through treatment for cancer, and I am thinking of him every day. The treatment is difficult and his prognosis is good. In his blog Future World, he writes about many angles of daily life, and my life is less full without his daily posts. His blog literally makes me laugh out loud sometimes. I appreciate him taking time to comment on my blog.
5. I follow JM Goyder who is not afraid to write the truth, no matter how emotional and revealing. She often writes about the experience of having a loved one (her spouse) in a nursing home. Her story reminds me of the excellent book “To Love What Is” by Alix Kates Shulman.
6. I follow not one, but two blogs by Rebecca, prolific author of Thrifty Style at 60 and Scene in Our Garden. Amazingly, she writes still more blogs, on spiritual and family topics: Links are on the garden blog. Somehow she still finds time to comment on mine.
7. New to blogging is Susan Poozan, writing a weekly entry about her life in London. She is the sister of Mr. Tootlepedal and is someone who, like her brother, knows how to tell a good story through photos. She immediately took to commenting and is supportive of my own blogging efforts. I appreciate it.
And of course, we have the gardening blogs! Some of these writers offer comments more often on my Facebook page link to the blog than here on the blog itself.
8. Danger Garden is all about tough pointy plants, not the much softer and wussier plants that I grow, and so I find her blog fascinating and educational.
9. Debbie Teashon has recently redesigned the blog on her Rainy Side Gardeners site. I’ve been following Rainyside for years and used to participate in the forum (now discontinued) and have had the pleasure of getting together in person with some of the regular readers. Debbie has been to visit us at the beach twice in the last year and is ever supportive with comments and help.
10. Outlaw Gardener is another entertaining blogger whose garden spills over and breaks the rules. Danger, Outlaw, and Rainyside are all friends and get to go plant shopping together. I envy this!
11. My favourite gardening blog remains Moosey’s Country Garden. I intend to spend the winter catching up on the last year’s worth of posts. Talk about supportive: She once mailed me a book (“A Garden, a Pig, and Me”) all the way from New Zealand! She has been writing a journal on her elegantly designed website since we before the most of us jumped on the blogging bandwagon.
12. The Miserable Gardener is a particular favourite of mine. The author has suffered tragedy, in the death of his true soulmate, that breaks my heart. Since last spring, he is writing in the persona of his border collie, Chess. That sounds cutesy. It isn’t. This is one of the blogs (and they are few) that makes me laugh aloud sometimes. He engages well with all his commenters. A lot of his subject matter is over my head because he is a true botanist and plant collector.
13. Garden in a City is another recent discovery from someone’s blogroll. The author is a good back and forth commenter and supporter of other blogs and writes of topics that bring back city gardening memories for me….like collecting bags of leaves from the curb in Seattle to add to one’s compost pile.
14. I Vary Widely touches on many subjects, with a bit of gardening and a lot about dogs. It is personal, inspirational, and revealing.
15. Alison of Bonney Lassie not only comments on my blog but has been to visit my garden. I was at first confused by the title of her blog into thinking she was a Scottish gardener till I figured out she lives by Bonney Lake in the Pacific Northwest.
Rule number 4
Now for the seven interesting facts about myself. I recently avoided the Facebook meme of having to come up with surprising facts about oneself. It is hard.
1. I used to be a punk rocker and spend many evening out either moshing at punk shows or dancing to disco, reggae, and new wave, since unlike the classic punk rocker I did not espouse the view that “Disco is Dead”.
2. Uh oh. I am stumped for interesting facts.
Um. Once upon a time, I almost moved to Arizona for love. That would have led to a very different style of gardening.
3. Thirty years ago, I lived on a pot farm. A pot farm in house in the city. I personally did not enjoy smoking pot and I did not participate in the farm work in any way. It was another thing I did for love, I suppose. My partner won all sorts of awards at some sort of pot convention after we no longer lived together. My main reason for ending the relationship was that I no longer wanted the stress of worrying that the household would get busted.
4. I bought my first house at age 25. My friends were highly skeptical of this venture, as they thought my mortgage ($400 a month) was impossibly high. (We were mostly poor.) My main reason for wanting a house was so that I could garden without fear of having to move.
5. I had a housecleaning business for 18 years. And became very tired of cleaning.
6. I was much closer to my grandmother than to my parents. She had a day care center in her home (unlicensed, back in the 60s) so I was raised by her more than by my parents, for which I am grateful.
7. I have realized I am a lot less interesting than I thought I was because of my difficulty in coming up with seven things here.
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