Thank You Blotanical

I want to thank all the Blotanists out there that voted for me in Blotanical's yearly awards. I was a finalist in three categories: Best Organic Blog, Best Vegetable Gardening Blog, and Best Massachusetts Blog. For those that don't know what Blotanical is, it is a online gardening social networking site for bloggers or those who just like to read blogs. It has over 1500 gardening blogs listed now. It is a great way to satisfy your blog reading cravings.

I found out yesterday I won in the Best Organic Blog category. I was floored. Last year I wasn't even in the top five for any category. This year I actually won an award. Whoohoo!

Now I have to set the scene. Picture me with a big smile and tears running down my face and me standing on the podium with a statue of a - hmm what should it be? - with a statue of all those wonderful creatures that have helped me out with my gardening this year - birds, ladybugs, lacewings, assassin bugs, frogs, toads, ground beetles, wasps (even if they were eating my raspberries earlier this year), flies, baby fairies (oh wait the rest of you call them glow worms), and last but surely not the least, bees of all kinds. The nasty earwig is not invited onto my statue. He does help eat some bad insects but he he ate all the silks off my corn this year so I got none. Last year he got into my Chinese cabbage and shredded two of the three I had planted.

Anyway, back to my acceptance speech. I want to thank my mom for making me weed and teaching me that hard work is needed in the garden even when you don't want to do it. She also let me pick the strawberries to show me the sweet rewards of gardening. She never once sprayed her garden, but used ducks, turkeys and geese. Their pens surrounded the garden and they ate the grasshoppers that were her major pest, so she taught me to garden naturally. She always had a compost bucket in the kitchen. I grew up thinking this was "normal", so when I finally got a yard it was the first thing I started. Even before any plants went in the ground. I'd like to thank my husband, who won't eat most of what I grow and as far as I know has never stepped in the garden but supports me in anything I do. I'd like to thank Stuart who created Blotanical and has given me a place I call home. Last but not least, I'd like to thank my readers, without whom I wouldn't have won this beautiful award. Thank you all.

I was also runner up in Best Massachusetts Blog and second runner up in Best Vegetable Gardening Blog. So another whoohoo is in order. Whoohoo! Congradulations to Ellie Mae's Cottage and My Little Vegetable Garden, the winners in those categories.