The Liebster Award

I’ve recently become aware of a kind gesture amongst the blogging community, which is to acknowledge and promote one another’s efforts via various blogging awards. And so I would like to thank The Belmont Rooster (thebelmontrooster.wordpress.com) for kindly selecting me as a Liebster Award recipient. I follow The Belmont Rooster’s blog for his meticulous plant knowledge, great photos, enthusiasm for gardening, and because he posts from a garden and climate so very different to my own.

As is the tradition when accepting the Liebster Award, I am obliged to answer a few questions from The Belmont Rooster…

1) Why did you start blogging?
At first it was to document the progress of my garden as I transform it, to remind myself of how far we’ve come and to motivate myself to keep going. Then I realised how much I just like writing about gardening in general, and sharing my love of plants with like-minded individuals.

2) What do you like the most about blogging?
Having people from around the world stumble across my blog, and share in my gardening experiences or thoughts on a particular plant.

3) What inspires you to continue blogging?
The plants and sights of nature that I come across every day. I only wish I had more time to blog, I’m forever taking plant photos that I’d like to use in ‘future’ posts.

4) What is your favorite time of the year?
Summer! Even though the (Sydney) Australian summer can be unbearably hot and humid, I love the heat and some of my favourite plants are in bloom then- especially the frangipanis (plumeria) and crepe myrtles.

5) What do you look for when deciding to follow a blog?
Great images usually tempt me in, but it’s the enthusiasm of the writer for their garden, no matter what its size, that makes me click ‘Follow’.

6) When deciding to start a blog, what made you choose WordPress?
Frankly, it was the only blogging site I knew of at the time.

7) How important is it to you for other bloggers to make comments and “Like” your blog?
I love it when people click ‘like’ on a post, or even better, make a comment on it. I can see from my site stats how many people are viewing my posts, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily liked what they found here. But I do appreciate though that not everyone who finds my site has a wordpress account to even be able to ‘like’ it.

8) How important is it to you to gain more followers?
Although I would keep blogging even if nobody were reading it, followers (and likes and comments) remind me that there are in fact real people out there with a shared interest. I want to know more about those people! I don’t tell people from my offline life that I have a gardening blog, as I don’t want ‘sympathy’ visits and likes from friends. I want people to read my blog because they love gardening.

9) What do you hope other bloggers to gain from your blog?
I hope that they will enjoy looking at gardening from my perspective (a relatively novice but passionate gardener); learn what they wanted to know about a particular plant (especially when Google brings them here with very specific search terms); or just enjoy my pictures of the amazing plant world.

10) Thank goodness this is the last one! Do you think these questions are dumb?
Not at all! But I wish they had been more gardening specific 🙂

And finally, I am also obliged to pass on a few quick facts about myself- I’ll keep them gardening-oriented I think:

* My favourite plant of all is the Pierre De Ronsard rose.
* My pet hate is gardening when it’s windy. And in a related matter, I’m sick of sweeping the gum leaves off our front verandah!
* I have a terrible soft-spot for buying sickly (but extremely cheap) plants from the ‘bargain bin’ area of the nursery.
* I talk to the plants in the garden. And I usually think of them as female, as in “Don’t you ladies look lovely today”.

In good time I will pass on the Award to some of the blogs that I follow!