Hammer time! *can't touch this*

So last week, Michele Holt (a/k/a Poe, a/k/a MamaHolt to FinnigantheCurious and SO of Jackdaddy, otherwise known as the Curious Holts) of the awesome blog Wabi-Sabi Home and Garden honored my shameful wee garden blog with an Honest Scrap award. My First Blog Award! (sniff)


I was so astounded, I couldn't muster more than a lame 'dohhhh gimme time to work on that, K?" at the time; now that I've more than a week to compose myself, perhaps I can give a reasonably coherent response.

Here are the rules:
Rule 1. Brag about the award. Now I usually ain't much fer braggin, but the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw MamaHolt's post was this:


Sally says everything I wanted to say.

Rule 2. Include the name of the blogger who gave you the award and link back to that blogger. Done did it!

Rule 3. Choose a minimum of seven blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.

Rule 4. Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with this award.
Oh geez! There's just way too many brilliant blogs to list, particularly if we're talking Austin garden blogs, many of which I have listed to the right of this very page. Instead, I've listed seven blogs that aren't Austin garden blogs, in no particular order. (Later, I'll go to each website, one by one, and leave each blogger a little comment about the award I have bestowed upon them, which each blogger will probably delete, one by one, as they shake their heads in puzzlement cuz they don't know me from Eve, or so I imagine.)

My Milk Toof features the adventures of ickle and Lardee, two oddly enchanting and strangely adorable milk teef, animated by Inhae Lee.

Coyote Crossing features writing and photography from the Mojave Desert and elsewhere by Chris Clarke. If anyone can tell me where I can find a copy of Clarke's The Irascible Gardener, I would be forever in that person's debt.

Hungersauce features "Organic Vegetable Gardening, Cooking, and Dining out in Austin, Texas" by Kate Thornberry, who is a staff food writer for The Austin Chronicle, a master organic gardener and The Pie Lady, among many, many other talents. (Honesty Alert: I flat out stole this entry from Iris's Honest Scrap post over at Society Garlic. And OK, so it is a bit of an Austin garden blog, although it really seems like more of a Austin foodie blog to me.)

Compost Confidential is the blog of Joe Lamp’l, a nationally syndicated garden writer and host of the PBS series Garden Smart, and DIY Network’s Fresh from the Garden. I thoroughly enjoyed his series of posts on the $25 Organic Victory Garden Challenge -- proof positive that some people can indeed savor cheap good eats through home organic vegetable gardening (even if I'm not "some people"!). While we were dealing with an extreme drought in CTX, Joe was dealing with a monsoon. Everybody's got something to deal with, don't they?

(um ok, how many more blogs ima posta list?)

The Grumpy Gardener is written by Steve Bender of Southern Living, and there's few things I like better than a good solid grump of a gardener. With tags like "Don't Plant This", topics covering everything from crepe myrtle sex to "Why I Resent My Son", and posts covering such things as "Fresh Cat! The only all-natural rodent repellent made from 100% powdered housecats!", Steve's blog is guaranteed to make Dr Pepper shoot out your nose at least once every 5 posts. (Now you kids get off my lawn!)

May Dreams Gardens is a blog many gardeners know and love, including me. Written by Carol Michel, May Dreams Gardens features stories bout hoes, therapy sessions with Dr. Hortfreud, "You Might Be A Gardening Geek IF..."posts, posts from garden fairies, Hortense Hoelove's advice column to the plant-lorn, AND is host to Garden Bloggers Bloom Day on the 15th of each month -- what's not to love? (Plus I've managed to win two contests on the site -- bonus points!)

Anarchy in the Garden (formerly Victory Home & Garden) is written by Adriana Martinez, a "VEGAN! Wife to an omni husband, friend to all animals, farmer, Clash city rocker, tattoo enthusiast and a hell raiser." Adriana taught me the proper way to plant a strawberry jar. I like her blog a lot. I'd like it even better if she sold AITG t-shirts (hint hint).

Rule 5. List at least ten honest things about yourself. Hoo boy. Key word here, I suppose, is honest, as in "things many people don't generally know about me that could prove to be somewhat embarrassing or cringeworthy if they did know, which are generally reflective of who I truly am as a person", yikes. Against my better judgment, I've included a few factoids fitting that description on my list, along with a couple of "Get OUT!"s, a "Too funny!", a "WTF?" and a "Whoa! Gross!", that is to say, namely and to wit:

• I’ve never traveled outside the North American continent.
• I get woozy at the sight of my own blood.
• My parents did not give me a middle name.
• When it comes to food, spirits, and coffee, I am a complete and utter elitist prick (“snob” does not even begin to describe it).
• I was obsessed with the book and movie “Gone With the Wind” as a kid. Between February and March 1973, I saw the movie a dozen times on the big screen during a nationwide re-release.
• In my 1979 high school yearbook (my junior year), my sister’s picture is above my name (she was a freshman), and above my sister’s name, there is a picture of a girl that neither of us can remember. (And they wonder why I dropped out, hmpfh. Woops - guess I let another honest thing slip!)
• My earliest memory is watching JFK’s funeral on TV. I was 20 months old.
• A fresh pear in my carry-on bag earned me an IonScan, courtesy of the TSA, at the Denver International Airport this past February. Or at least that’s what they told me triggered the scan, at the end of nine harrowing minutes starting with "step over here, ma'am" followed by the silent treatment as a soiled scrap of felt attached to an electronic wand thingy was rubbed inside, outside, over and around every crevice, nook and cranny of my bag by a scowling uniformed and latex-gloved individual, who finally decided to let me get on the dang plane already. After reading up on the IonScan on the Intertubes, I can't say I buy the 'pear' explanation, unless perhaps an inordinate number of unscrupulous individuals are smuggling explosives or drugs inside fresh fruit placed in carry-on bags? (on domestic flights with no connections, mind you)
• I simply adore rude, crude and socially unacceptable music. If there’s a band with a rude name that sings crude songs that nearly everyone hates, I probably admire them beyond compare. Butt Trumpet, Legionaires Disease, Sex Pistols, Geto Boys...you get the picture. What can I say? I have the musical tastes of a 12 year old boy.
• I enjoy a well-prepared variety meat every now and then. About three times a year, I sit myself down to a heaping mess of piping hot fried chicken livers with cream gravy, and eat every doggone one of ‘em. Every Thanksgiving, I make giblet gravy - no part spared. And on occasion, perhaps once every year or two, I eat sweetbreads. Cafe Cenizo at the Gage Hotel in Marathon does sweetbreads up right. Little Texas Bistro did a fine job, too. (Where is Paul Petersen now?)
  

And now you know...(pregnant pause)...The Rest of The Story. *Thank you, Michele!*