Category Archives: The Blogging World

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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They found me!

Snowdrops
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I’m not sure who "they" are, but they’ve definitely found me.

Recently, I’ll go to my TypePad page in the morning and see that I’ve got a bunch of new comments, which are meat and drink–nay, the very nectar of life–to most bloggers. But when I look at the comments themselves they’re mostly nonsense, except that each contains the url for a site having nothing to do, trust me, with gardening.

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Thanks to James, the White Knight of the Black Pitt–

You could knock me down with a feather.

Amongst the various honors done me in my short blogging career, perhaps none ranks with this, that James Alexander-Sinclair put me on a short list of gardening blogs that might just possibly be worth reading. Publicly.

In his Gardener’s Magazine wrap-up article for 2008, “Of Cabbages and Kings,” James (Blogging at Blackpitts Garden) tips his hat to Nigel Colborn’s Silvertreedaze, Emma Townshend’s Baklava Shed Coalition (the name alone recommends it), Veg Plotting, and—the lowly Manic. This is illustrious company,.

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Flags at half-mast, please–the Garden Monkey retires

Halfmast3

Tear your hair and shriek, ladies; men, howl, and break your computer keyboards o’er your knees, for you won’t need them anymore: the Garden Monkey has retired from blogging. The announcement went up yesterday, and the garden blogging world is reeling.

I have not been reticent about my love of the Monkey, whose early and public support meant much to me, so early in my blogging career, and whose friendship has meant more in the months since. Truly, I go about town bragging that the Manic is one of the Monkey’s five “desert island blogs.” Now who else has a category like that?

Exercising every ounce of self-control I’ve got, I’ll refrain from pleading for a respite, and instead wish the wise and venerable Monkey a long and well-deserved rest.

If I had three Monkey-related wishes, though, they’d be these: to have the Monkey grace this site with a guest blog; to see, eventually, the Return of the Monkey to blogging; and to know, if not the Monkey’s identity, at least his/her gender, because writing about him/her with the awkward him/her pronouns popping up all over the place is a royal pain and a half.

Hats off to the Monkey!

Eating Crow

Dagnabit, I was wrong about so many things in my last post, I feel compelled to go public. Trust me, I wouldn't do it if I didn't feel morally compelled. (Rumors that I'm worried about being sued are entirely false.)

The post was, of course, about the tree cut in Montana to adorn the lawn before the Capital.

Capitol tree still upright fr capitolchristmastree2008.org.
capitolchristmastree2008.org, photogallery

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