Category Archives: The Blogging World

A new look for the Manic: Comments, please!

You may notice that, while the inimitable banner remains the same, the blog now has but one sidebar, re-organized categories, and for the moment an absurdly brief blogroll. I’ve long wanted more space for text and pictures, and guess what? Ta-da!

The move from Type-pad to Word Press was a work in progress for almost a year, the work (and progress) provided primarily by my most excellent web guru and husband, while the unfinished pieces fall entirely in my purview.

HELP ME FIND THEM, if you would, by leaving comments on broken links (probably not all survived the move) and other problems.

I’d also appreciate feedback on the new layout, as well as other features. I’d considered having a drop-down menu across the top with such things as the categories and archive—and I’ve just noticed that the archive has disappeared. Oops. Got to do something about that.

Anyhoo, if you’ve got something to say, pro or con, about drop-down menus on blogs or other fascinating topics, please weigh in.

In the meantime, I’ll try to do something about those archives and the lists of my fine fellow-bloggers.

Product give-away standards–help!

To start at the end…

There's actually more to this story, but I'm saving some back until I get responses to this piece. So tell me what you think.

Background (Personal Position Statement)

Though I’m sure some of you will choke when you read this (either in laughter or astonishment), I feel I’ve acquired a relatively good feel for blogging etiquette over the year and a half since I started blogging seriously. But the whole world that blogging verges on remains closed to me. I don’t Twitter, and when someone recently invited me to join LinkedIn, I had to ask Alice Anistasia (Bay Area Tendrils) what that was (after I’d joined, no less.)

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A belated thanks, Fork ‘n’ Monkey (together with an extended digression on national anthems)

Something amazing happened last May. I know; that’s two seasons back, ancient history by gardening standards, an earlier era in the blogging world. But that’s when it happened: that’s when the Manic won the one of the awards in the second annual Fork ‘n’ Monkey Awards. Attention must be paid, however belatedly, and thanks rendered, both to the Garden Monkey and James A-S for sponsoring the second F ‘n’ M awards, and to everyone who voted for the Manic as best North American blog. Being nominated is an honor; winning still has me blinking in disbelief. Wow.

(And then I promptly shut down operations; y’all must have been rethinking those votes!)

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Non-compost-mentis

So here’s the question for the day, people: can I turn a compost tumbler that’s a great fit for someone who’s almost two feet taller than I am? Let me explain.

Just yesterday afternoon I closed a deal with Chris of Backyard Gardening Blog to review what he modestly calls the World's Greatest Organic Compost Tumbler. Now, my first reaction to most offers is to say no, absolutely not, but, well, Chris made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: he’d give me a tumbler in exchange for an honest review, a promise not to sue him if it turns out that I can’t rotate the thing, and my next child. This decision required careful consideration, but after about three seconds I went with the tumbler. (Please don’t tell him I’m 55 and past all that childbearing business.)

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Contest on the way–try it if you dare

   Snowdrops

Having spent the morning in a mind-numbing fury while trying to print two pages of an IRS document necessary to report the income (ha-ha) from my business (hee-hee) over the past year, I have probably burnt out my two remaining brain cells, as well as ensuring that I will return to earth as a nematode, and probably not the beneficial sort. A quiet acceptance of the world's vagaries was not demonstrated by moi.

On the other hand, THE COMPOSTING ARTICLE IS UP, all hundred and fifty pages of it, looking quite well-behaved and tidy for something so sprawling, even voracious. Amazing, how Eric has reduced the monster that dominated my life for months to a meek little sidebar. (The mysteries of translating a Word document into a website are beyond me; I use “translate” here in its old theological meaning of “to transport to heaven without natural death.”)

Eric by the way is Eric Vinge, of Planet Natural who asked me to write an article on compost. So I did. (If I'd had any idea…. Then again, if he'd had any idea….)  Anyway, now it's got a name ("Compost: In the Bin, the Barden, and the Environment") and a home site (The Composter Connection) and one of those nifty pictures done by Eric's artist, whose name I cannot find, but I promise that when I do, I'll put it up.

This article has got everything, and if you think it doesn't, I dare you to prove it. Come on, put 'em up; let's see your footwork. All that talk don't mean nothin'. Meet me in the alley, and we'll see what you're really made of. Just be sure to bring whatever it is you think you know about composting.

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