They’re back – the gardenblogging awards nicknamed Mousies – and the “Nominate me!” campaigns have begun. So I’ll add my 2 cents and encourage you to nominate:
- This blog for Best Urban Gardening Blog.
- For Best Writing, GardenRant.
- And for Best Company blog, the Homestead Gardens Blog. Even being named a finalist will get the attention of other independent garden centers and encourage them to start blogs that’ll educate and inspire customers and create community – something that the Lowe’s national gardening blog can never do.
Click here to submit your nominations.
I sure HOPE you notice the biggest change here – the simpler and to-my-eyes much prettier design by Julia Holland. The design covers both my old blog and my two-year-old website coz the website (static pages) has been moved to Wordpress where I can fuss with it much more easily than I ever did using Dreamweaver templates (ugh!), which are so outdated it’s hard to find people to help with them anymore.
Financial News
And while Julia and I tried to find the perfect, unobtrusive ways to display sponsor logos, I started losing faith in the whole sponsor idea altogether, and decided to discontinue the practice. The scheme just wasn’t bringing in enough money to justify the effort, especially the effort to have enough traffic to impress sponsors. Don’t worry; I won’t be junking up the place with Google ads – they’re also too much trouble (and reader annoyance) for so little income. So now the graphics in the sidebar are all unpaid-for – yay!
(Damn, what am I saying? It’s not like I have a fat pension or health insurance paid for by someone else.)
But (finally) I have regular income from garden writing – for garden centers – and have even felt secure enough to – wait for it, family members who’ve expressed concern for the state of my home – hire a maid! Yeah, I can hardly believe it either. Ditto hiring someone to move 7 cubic yards of mulch for me (more on that soon). And even went to the Healthy Back Store and brought home an expensive but super-comfortable chair because hell, I’m worth it! Oh, yeah, I’m living the high life here.
What’s missing on Ye Olde Website
PHOTOS! I won’t bore you with HOW it happened but dozens of photos were lost in the move. They’ll be found and replaced when I get around to it, frankly. (I need a break from website-fiddling).
But on a happier note, with no sponsors I see no need to continue my monthly newsletters, which took 6-7 hours to create, test and send. Anyway, lots of short news items that I used to save up for the newsletter are now being Tweeted relatively quickly, and that seems like just the right place to use them.
Speaking of Social Networking
Figuring out how to use Twitter is a challenge, though. Sure, everyone says you absolutely have to Tweet if you expect any career success, ever (yes, almost that dire a command) but what to do if you really don’t enjoy it? I’m taking a cue from the journalists I follow and Tweeting mainly substantive, on-topic links. That’ll just have to suffice.
I love Facebook, though, and credit it with all sorts of reunions with college boyfriends and just this week, a friend from kindergarten I hadn’t seen since the ’70s. Also, people don’t update nearly as often on Facebook (thank you!) and the updates aren’t jam-packed with symbols and abbreviations (#@RT; need I go on?) And it seems tailor-made for following my Left-Coast relatives and friends I like to hear from occasionally, just occasionally.
If you’ve found your way here via AgelessNorthShore’s recommended 14 Blogs 4 U, I invite you to look around. You’ll see from the categories that I cover not just what’s happening in my garden but news in the eco-gardening world and whatever I’m up to at the moment. Usually it’s organizing for good causes and no money (see graphics in sidebar) but finally, it’s for pay! Just launched this week is Garden Center Blogger, where my partners and I help independent garden centers communicate online successfully, and get the very best local gardenbloggers hired in the bargain!
It’s all part of what I used to call My So-Called Second Career, in which I tried to cobble together a living as a garden writer. (For my first 30 years after college I worked as a “court” reporter in Congress and the courts of D.C., when I wasn’t doing stints at a string of nonprofits that started with Common Cause.) Finally after attempting what seems like dozens of possible revenue channels, it’s looking like using my blogging experience to help companies in my industry succeed might just be the perfect fit. To clarify, helping companies that I really WANT to succeed. So even to a ’60s activist, it doesn’t feel like selling out to corporate America or whatever nightmare vision used to haunt us.
But back to Ageless North Shore – I THANK them for including me and I feel honored! I’m also a fan of Time Goes By, whose list of “elderbloggers” the folks at Ageless North Shore perused to find their favorites. Ronni Bennett does an awesome job and I’ve enjoyed contributing a couple of movie reviews to Time Goes By.
Related posts, including a couple on the team blog GardenRant, include:
Indie Garden Centers, Start Your Blogs
Garden Center Blogger Wants You
Memories of Working with Senator Kennedy
How Joe Biden Treats the Help
In Which my Secret Day Job is Revealed
Here I post about what’s new and good in organic and sustainable gardening practices, and great-performing, low-care plants. Also stories about my garden, news in ecogardening, and my adventures in the trenches of Washington, D.C. or farther afield. And occasionally I’ll go off-topic altogether, especially in winter. (See categories My Life, Culture, Nature, People/Media and Local.) A gardener’s gotta have a life.
My role models for teaching sustainable gardening are gardenwriter Ann Lovejoy, Washington State hort researcher Linda Chalker-Scott and television’s Paul James of “Gardening by the Yard.” Oh, and Paul Tukey of SafeLawns.org fame. More will be discovered over time, I’m sure.
Urban gardening is a topic I added in 2009, and that means covering urban gardening projects, as well as container and balcony gardening, backyard-sharing, the White House Kitchen Garden, and really anything I think is important to cover! It’s all good.
Affiliate agreements
The only source of income here is the occasional link to a company with whom I have an Affiliate Agreement contract – primarily Amazon. So the few times I recommend a book, I’ll include a link to its page on Amazon and if you buy one using the link, Amazon pays me 8 percent. I rarely recommend anything because honestly, I’m not much of a shopper myself.
Income sources not used on this blog
Notice any Google Adsense ads cluttering up the place? Also, I don’t do link exchanges, or take payment for links. Don’t ask.
They’re back – the gardenblogging awards nicknamed Mousies – and the “Nominate me!” campaigns have begun. So I’ll add my 2 cents and encourage you to nominate:
