Garden Bloggers' Carnival : Day Four

It's the last day of the Garden Blogger's Retro Carnival, and the theme is Added Value - or Ten for the Price of One.

Some people don’t have individual pages for their posts so had to link to an entire archive page. Great – we get more value for one click! Lady Luz linked to last February’s posts – she nominated the post for Feb 15th, but I enjoyed lots of the others too. Check out the picture of the chameleon as you scroll down.

Andee, the gardener in Chacala also linked to an archive page. Go down to the bottom to read about Learning to Garden in Chacala – and some small problems in cross-cultural communication. While you’re getting there - enjoy all the photos.



Carol of May Dreams Gardens has only linked to one post, but in it she links to the ten posts which she feels serve best as an introduction to her blog. So ten for the price of one again!

My contribution? This time last year I was having fun taking scanner photos. So here are some of the photos - ten of them, naturally.

And that's it for this edition of the Garden Blogger's Retro Carnival. Except that I have to end with a confession ... I've lost two links. Somebody sent me links to two posts - one about a porcupine and the other about bugs. And I've lost them. They arrived after the first carnival day, which had wildlife for it's theme, but I was going to include them anyway.I checked the posts out, but must have forgotten to save the message before I cancelled it. If it's you, please send them again - they were great posts. My comments box also went peculiar for a while last month, just as people were submitting links. I hope I got everything, but if you were expecting to see your post and it hasn't appeared - Blogger strikes again. Send them again, and we'll have a postcript day.

I hope you've enjoyed the Carnival - I certainly have. I really enjoyed all the posts, and it was specially nice to come across a few blogs which I'd not seen before. Several people have asked if the Carnival is going to be a regular event. Well, I don't know about regular, but I do have an idea for another one - with a difference. Watch this space!

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Garden Bloggers' Carnival - Day Three

Welcome to Day Three of the Garden Bloggers' Retro Carnival. If you've been following the Carnival you'll know that people have been sending in links to posts on their blogs which they want to revive, and that every day I'm publishing a lists divided (very roughly!) by theme. Today's theme is gardening in winter.

We're starting with a Hallowe'en post. Hallowe'en was originally a Celtic festival called Samhain (pronounced sow-in), marking the Celtic New Year - which started on November 1st. The festival of Samhain on October 31st marked the end of the old year and the beginning of winter — the “season of cold and darkness.”

If like me your idea of carving a Hallowe'en pumpkin is a gash for a mouth, three holes for the eyes and nose and a left hand covered in sticking plasters, then see what they produced over at An eclectic garden

I don't know about where you are, but here we're still having bright sunny days and it doesn't seem like winter at all yet. But if you’re in the northern hemisphere and the ever-shorter days and dropping temperatures are starting to depress you, check out this post on Gardening for winter interest by Jessica at Garden Detective

And if like me you don’t have a greenhouse but still start getting itchy to plant just after Christmas, you’ll love Angie’s post at Gardens-n-Junk.

Winter is the ideal time to rethink your garden design for the following year. What colours predominate in your garden? Do you go for subtle pastels? Cool blues and whites? Bright reds and yellows happily clashing away ? Kris at Blithewold won’t mind if you break the rules.



And while you're at it, why not get some inspiration from some historic landscaped gardens. Cave Hill Gardens has some suggestions as to where you might look.

You might also want to revamp your gardening wardrobe - throw out some off the stuff that's just too far gone and downgrade those tatty jeans and that old jumper that you're starting to feel conspicuous in at the supermarket. Deciding what to put on your feet when you’re gardening can be a delicate choice too. Here’s a review from Ellis Hollow on the ideal footwear for use when shovelling, mowing – and as a rodent repellent. It’s the smell you see...)

But don't get too depressed by the winter. At least most of us know the long sunny days of summer will soon be back. Anne of the Tundra Garden has no such luck - she even has snow in July, but she still manages to grow things. Check out how at her blog on the northernmost garden of the North American continent.

That's it for today, but the Carnival will be back midweek with more links. And this time the theme will be - well, buy one, get ten free.

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Garden Bloggers' Carnival - Day Two

Whoops - I promised the carnival would continue immediately after the last post, and didn't make it. A series of small crises intervened - don't they always? Links are still coming in, incidentally, so you still have time to send yours if you want.

Today's theme is - well, growing things. Seems to be a common interest of gardeners ....

Several people sent posts on vegetable gardening. If you’ve never connected growing potatoes with either poetry or the shipping forecast, Melanie of Bean Sprouts can explain, while Jessica of Garden Detective points out that food from your garden doesn’t always have to be specially planted.

Cauliflowers come in all shapes and colours - round, pointy, white green even orange. Patrick of Bifurcated Carrots discovered the purple variety.

Next time you put mustard on your hot dog, think of Green Thumb of India Garden. She's been growing her own.

And while it’s not exactly vegetable gardening, some phallic fungi growing over a funtimehappygardenexplosion set off some philosophical musings ...

That's it for today. The next theme (probably tomorrow but I'm not promising any more) will be winter gardening - you know, what happens about January when you start getting itchy to DO something ....

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It's Carnival Time!

Welcome to Day One of the Garden Bloggers' Retro Carnival! If you've been following the blog recently, you'll know I suggested that people should send me links to old posts they'd like to revive. A big thank you to everyone who responded - I've had great fun reading all the posts and I know other people will enjoy them too.

Most of the posts fall into categories, so I shall be publishing the links over four or five days, each day focusing on a specific category. Incidentally, if you haven't yet got round to sending a link, it's not too late. as long as I get it in the next few ddays, there'll be time to include it. Use the comments box.

OK - let the carnival begin. I want to start with a post that just probably sums up what most of us think about gardening - Yvonne of Country Gardener arguing that gardening without the three C’s – care, commitment and consistency – is nothing but “outdoor decorating”.

It's one that's hard to follow, so we'll change tack and look at some more lighthearted posts. A lot of you linked to posts about wildlife - and other animals - in the garden. And here they are :

Anthony at the Compost Bin had a visit from a Turkey - and it wasn't even Thanksgiving.

Not all the animals in your gardens are uninvited visitors. Down on the Allotment gives a round-up of some of the dogs who keep various garden bloggers company when they’re hard at work.

And still on the subject of dogs, what bulbs smell like a dog with severe problems of indigestion ? Find out at Garden Detective

Finally today, for some stupendous photos of insect life in the garden, see these two posts from Moe at Iowa Voice : Flower flies on spiderwort and an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on a Buttonbush

That's all for now, but there'll be more tomorrow. Not surprisingly, a lot of you wrote about growing things. So tomorrow it's potatoes and the shipping forecast, purple cauliflowers, phallic fungi and much more!

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Let's Have a Garden Bloggers Carnival!

About a month ago, in connection with my other blog, I received an invitation to participate in a "blog carnival". The idea is that bloggers who are writing on the same topic send a link to one of their posts to the carnival organiser, who then publishes them with a brief description of what the post contains.




I thought it was a great idea, and wondered if we could do the same for garden blogs. But given we've got Garden Voices which does the same thing every day (thank you GV!), there didn't seem much point.

Then about a week ago, I was looking for an old photo which I remembered posting last year, and came across a post which I'd completely forgotten writing but which, on rereading, seemed really good. And it occurred to me that we all must have posts sitting in our archives which deserve another outing.

So here's the idea - send me a link to a post you wrote some time ago, which by now everyone will have forgotten about, but which you think is worth re-reading - or which you'd like new readers to see. Use the comments box - I won't publish the messages but will collect up the links. Then, during November when life in the garden calms down (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere), I'll publish a series of posts including all of them. We'll call it the Garden Bloggers' Retro Carnival. Just to get you in the mood, the photos on today's post are all from 2006 to early 2007 - spring, summer, autumn and winter.

Anyone's welcome to participate, so by all means pass the message on to other bloggers you're in contact with. And if you haven't been blogging long and don't have any old posts, don't worry. Send a link to a recent post and we'll have a newbies section.

If you'd like to see what a blog carnival looks like, have a look at this one which focuses on books and reading .

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